


How I Met Your Daughter

by BleedingInk



Category: Supernatural
Genre: ADORABLE LESBIANS, Alternate Universe - Human, Domestic, F/F, F/M, Flashbacks, Fluff, Happy Ending, M/M, Mistaken for Being in a Relationship, unreliable narrators
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-07-12
Packaged: 2018-01-19 22:33:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1486561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleedingInk/pseuds/BleedingInk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlie and Dorothy are on a long road trip to Dorothy's hometown. Dorothy insist they should tell her father the short version of how they met, but Charlie rather likes the long one...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Walking on Sunshine

“We already passed this Gas Station,” Charlie says. “Like three times.”

Dorothy looks up from the map she unfolded on the hood of the car with a supremely tired expression.

“Are you telling me I don’t know how to get to my own hometown?” she asks.

“I’m telling you there is nothing wrong with asking directions,” Charlie say, leaning on the car and putting on her aviator glasses. “Won’t make you any less of a badass.”

Dorothy click her tongue, annoyed, and then stomps inside the store. Charlie tries to check her e-mails, but she’s getting no signal. She really doesn’t like this. They spent a bad night in a motel bed that smelled weird and then six hours driving through the California dessert with the sun on their faces. She is tired, hungry, and despite Dorothy’s insistence on the contrary, convinced they don’t have the faintest idea where they are.

Dorothy comes back with two bottles of water and some granola bars.

“We need to follow this road for another hour, and then take the next turn left,” she tells Charlie, in a low tone of voice that indicates she’s offended Charlie won’t just trust her map-reading skills. “We’ll be there by nightfall.”

“Good,” say Charlie, coldly.

“Good,” replies Dorothy, and climbs on the driver’s seat.

They manage to stay mad at each other for exactly twenty minutes. Charlie is staring out of the window, counting the cactuses and rocks, while distractedly manipulating the radio (her Ipod had ran out of battery hours ago), when _Walking on Sunshine_ starts blasting on one of the stations.

Charlie glances in Dorothy’s direction. She automatically started tapping her fingers on the wheel to the rhythm of the song and humming under her breath. Charlie tries to bite back the smile, but seeing Dorothy getting excited about the music (the way her blue eyes lit up, the way she wiggles her shoulders) without even realizing it’s always one of the best things, and besides… that is _their_ song.

So Charlie starts singing a little louder: “ _I used to think maybe you loved me now I know that it’s true…_ ”

And Dorothy sings back: “… _and I don’t want to spend my whole life just in waiting for you…”_

The car is flying through the road, and they are singing out so loud now Charlie’s sure they can be heard from miles around, but neither of them cares.

“ _I’M WALKING ON SUNSHINE!_ ” they roar along the radio, and the trucker they pass by honks and shows them a thumb up on the rearview mirror. Dorothy explodes in fit of laughter, which of course makes Charlie laugh, and then they just can’t remember why they’d been fighting in the first place.

“I’m sorry, Red,” says Dorothy, extending a hand to put it on Charlie’s knee. “You were right. We should have asked for directions earlier.”

“That’s okay,” says Charlie, interlocking her fingers with her girlfriend’s. “It confirms my theory, though.”

“Oh?” asks Dorothy, taking her eyes off the road long enough to crook an eyebrow at Charlie.

“You’d be lost without me.”

Dorothy giggles and Charlie thinks she can endure a thousand road trips sleeping in crappy motels with no Wi-Fi just for that sound.

“By the way, I have to warn you,” says Dorothy. “My dad’s gonna interrogate you on every little detail about our relationship. Don’t give him much rope. Just tell him the short version of everything.”

“Oh, but I like the long version,” Charlie complains. “Remember how we met?”

“Of course I do,” Dorothy smiles. “It was a Friday.”


	2. Friday I'm In Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this chapter is, of course, a reference to the song of the same name by The Cure.

The phone was ringing somewhere.

Charlie emerged from her cocoon of pillows and blankets, which was a bad idea, because there was a ray of sun coming in through the window pointing directly at her face. She was blinded for several minutes as she started feeling the blankets around her trying to locate her cellphone, which was ringing again with the Star Wars theme. That meant it was Dean. What the hell did he want so early in the morning?

There was a loud thump, and with a groan, Charlie rolled out of bed until she fell on the carpet, taking the cover with her to protect herself from the indecently bright day outside. She finally found her phone right next to bed post. She put it on her ear and let out a groan that could have been a “Hello” if you were in a good mood.

Dean was in a good mood.

“Good morning, sunshine!” he shouted, making Charlie move the phone as far away as her arm permitted it.

“What you want, Winchester?” she asked.

“Wow, roll back the attitude,” said Dean, laughing at her grumpiness. “I’m just fulfilling my duty as your alarm.”

“It’s Saturday!” Charlie protested.

“Uh… no, it’s not,” said Dean.

“Yes, it’s Saturday, Dean,” Charlie said, stretching her hand to reach for the on button of her laptop, faithfully placed in her nightstand. “Why would you torture me like this? You know Saturdays are the only day when I finally can sleep in and…”

The laptop finished turning on, and Charlie’s eyes shot open in terror.

“Oh, fuck, it’s Friday!”

“It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” said Dean, who was obviously fighting a fit of laughter. “You’re gonna be late for work.”

“You’re an asshole, Winchester!” Charlie shouted as she got up and frantically began picking up clothes from the carpet to see if any of them were clean enough to wear.

“I love you too, baby,” said Dean, not at all phased by Charlie’s insults. She was always in a bad mood in the mornings. “Have a good day.”

He hung up before Charlie could insult him again, but that was okay, because she was already running towards the bathroom to brush her teeth (No time for a shower or even for combing her hair. The helmet would squash it anyways). Sam was already gone, but he’d left her half a pot of coffee (bless him), so at least Charlie had time to charged up on caffeine before picking up her bag and running down the staircase.

By a combination of ignoring a lot of red lights, a lot of cursing at her bike (she drove a secondhand Vespa GTS 250ie Dean had found for her), and sheer dumb luck at finding a parking spot, she managed to make it to her desk just in the nick of time.

“Well, good morning,” Harry, the other I.T. guy, greeted her.

“What’s good about it?” grunted Charlie, sipping from the extra large plastic cup of coffee she had picked in the lobby while she waited for the computer to be ready.

“Woah, the breakup really hit you hard, huh?” said Harry, who never really had much sense of what were appropriate boundaries and conversation topics.

“Shut up,” said Charlie, still not awake enough to think of a witty comeback.

“I mean, you used to come in all giggles and blasting out ‘80s pop songs,” continued Harry. “Tell me all about the wonderful adventures you and Galinda had…”

“Glinda,” Charlie corrected him. “And I don’t want to talk about it.”

“No, I know,” said Harry, nodding. “I’m just saying, if you need someone to talk, I’m right here.”

Charlie shot him a venomous look, considered asking him if the word “lesbian” meant anything to him, and made a metal note to ask Sam later if she could be charged with attempted murder for throwing a cup of hot coffee at Harry’s face. Luckily she didn’t have to resort to such methods, because the first call of the day came in at that moment (it always did when the janitor accidentally unplugged someone’s computer the previous evening) and Charlie finally found an excuse to stop talking to her co-worker.

 

* * *

 

Dorothy was, and always had been, one of those obnoxious persons who thought the best way to begin the day was to wake up before the first light and do a million of useful and productive things as if to shame all the caffeinated zombies who wouldn’t be completely awake until noon rolled around.

That Friday morning, by the time Charlie was barely crawling out of bed, Dorothy had already gone on her daily run (she had found out Palo Alto had some really lovely panoramic routes from which she could contemplate the sunrise as she trotted), taken a long warm shower, drank two cups of her favorite brand of green tea as she finished some sketches she had left scattered on her desk, and unpacked at least two boxes.

She still was unsure about the geography of the city, but when she left her studio, she had plenty of time to find her way to Bobby Singer’s Garage in the not yet jammed streets.

And also to stress out about all the bad things that could go wrong on her first day of work, but she did her breathing exercises and didn’t let it get to her.

She left her bike in the parking lot (she drove a fully-restored 1934 Harley-Davidson RL 45 she had been saving _forever_ to buy) and sauntered in with her head held high, ready to ignore the curious and confused looks she was sure to get.

It was unnecessary. There was nobody there but a guy on a plaid shirt talking on the phone.

“I love you too, baby,” he said. “Have a nice day.”

“Excuse me,” said Dorothy, when she saw him put his phone away. “Hi, I’m Dorothy Braun…”

“Oh, yeah, you’re our new paint guy… girl… person,” said the man, and awkwardly took a look at the clock. “I didn’t expect you for another half hour.”

“I’m always early,” said Dorothy, with a shrug.

“Right, okay,” he said, and offered his hand to her. “I’m Dean Winchester. I manage things ‘round here when Bobby’s late. Like, right now,” he added, rolling his eyes. “Let me give you the tour.”

Bobby Singer’s Garage wasn’t all that big, or particularly fancy, but Dean talked about it with fondness. He explained to Dorothy he had been working there since before he left high school, with Bobby showing him the ropes and giving him some extra cash for doing the pettiest tasks.

“Man’s like a father to me,” he said, and then looked away like he had talked too much. “Anyway, here’s where you’ll be working, Dory… can I call you Dory?”

“No,” said Dorothy, in a tone that clearly meant ‘If you ever call me that again, I will rip your intestines out and strangle you with them’.

“We bought sprayers and all that,” said Dean, rubbing the back of his neck, as he opened the door to a back space that was barely big enough for one car at the time. There were several cans already aligned against the wall. “That’s your overall,” he added, pointing at a hanger on the other side of the room. “We weren’t sure your size.”

“I’m sure it’ll be just fine,” said Dorothy, with a tense smile that didn’t show her teeth (probably because it would look like she was about to bite Dean’s head off).

“Right, okay, then,” said Dean. “I’ll leave you to it. Let Bobby know you’re here as soon as he arrives.”

“Okay,” said Dorothy, who wasn’t paying attention to him anymore and instead had began to inspect the sprayers, masks and brushes she had to work with. They were all brand new, so she didn’t find anything to complain about. That, at least, seemed like a good start.

 

* * *

 

Charlie’s mood improved notably as the sun peaked in the sky. She had always been a nocturnal being, so it wasn’t until midday when she recovered her natural good temper and kindness. Now she felt kinda bad for planning to kill Harry, who was probably just making friendly conversation. Also, she wasn’t sure calling Dean an asshole had been on her best roommate behavior. So she decided to take her lunch break earlier and swing by the Roadhouse.

Ellen, the bartender and owner, was busy as usual, but Charlie had the theory she had multiple clones or a vortex manipulator hidden somewhere, because she always managed to prepare multiple orders and still had time to talk to Charlie while she packed hers.

“My Jo’s coming home for Thanksgiving,” she told her, and Charlie tried not to grimace because it wasn’t even Halloween yet, but couldn’t blame Ellen for being excited when it came to Jo. “You know you and the guys are always welcome to spend the holidays with me.”

“I’ll tell them,” said Charlie, fully aware Sam and Dean were perfectly capable of presenting themselves at Ellen’s home completely empty handed and demand pumpkin pie like they hadn’t eaten in weeks. Leaving the Roadhouse, she still had the better part of an hour to get to Bobby’s garage, so she took it easy. It wasn’t like anybody was expecting her there.

 

* * *

 

Dorothy’s back was aching, and her brand new overall was covered in paint stains (she liked it better that way, it felt like it had been worked-in for some time now) when Bobby Singer opened the door of her small temple and told her to take a break.

“Why?” asked Dorothy, who was almost done with a yellow Sedan (that was of an ugly vomit green when it entered the garage that morning).

“Because it’s noon,” said Bobby, in that no-nonsense tone that Dorothy had liked about him during her interview. “And I don’t want you passing out from starvation and paint fumes on your first day.”

Dorothy was going to protest that she wasn’t going to pass out and if Bobby was insinuating that because she was a _girl_ … but then Bobby turned around and began yelling:

“Same thing goes to you, Rufus Turner, you ugly bag of bones!”

“Screw you, Singer!” Rufus yelled back, and it sounded muffled enough to indicate it was coming from underneath a car. “You just want me to chaperone you while you go flirtin’ with Ellen at the Roadhouse!”

They kept screaming at each other, and Dorothy couldn’t help but to smile. She’d had her reservations (she always did, it wouldn’t be the first time she was harassed for being the only girl in all-men environment), but most of the mechanics on Bobby’s garage were guys well into their fifties and sixties who had better things to do than mess with a girl that could have been their daughter (or granddaughter), and the youngest one, Dean, apparently had a girlfriend.

So it was all good. So far she was enjoying her new job. And now that Bobby mentioned it, yeah, she was a bit hungry. She had seen a naturist restaurant two blocks from there, so she took off her overall (but left her bandana on, nobody would notice) and was walking towards the door thinking what kind of salad she could get, when…

“Watch out!”

Dorothy barely had time to jump off the way of the Vespa coming at her in the parking lot, and she somehow managed to stay on her feet. The girl in the Vespa wasn’t so lucky: she lost control of her bike, and had to make a sudden maneuver to prevent from crashing into the wall. The Vespa stopped with a tire screech and its occupant fell on the side with a loud cursing.

“Oh, God!” Dorothy shouted, while she ran at her. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, yeah,” said girl, although her pained expression indicated otherwise. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see you…”

She was about to say something else, but then her eyes met Dorothy’s.

The world slowed down a bit.

And suddenly, Charlie was very aware she was wearing unwashed clothes and hadn’t combed her hair that morning, and Dorothy wondered how in the world could she have thought leaving her bandana on was a good idea.

“What happened?” asked Dean, coming out from the door behind Dorothy. “Are you guys okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” said Dorothy, helping Charlie to stand up. “And you?”

“Well, that was a bit of a rough landing,” said Charlie, discreetly rubbing her ass. She hurriedly opened her bag (that, miraculously, hadn’t ended right underneath Charlie or her Vespa) “But your lunch is intact,” she added, taking out a white plastic container.

“Oh, so that’s why you’re here?” said Dean, crossing his arms.

“I’m sorry I called you an asshole,” said Charlie, extended her peace offering towards him. “I got you a cheeseburger.”

“I don’t know,” said Dean, lifting his chin. “I think my feelings are a little more hurt than that.”

“I also got you pie,” said Charlie, adding a second plastic container.

“I can’t stay mad at you!” Dean laughed and threw her arms around her. Charlie kept the containers out of the way while he squeezed her, and stuck her tongue out, pretending to be dead over his shoulder. Dorothy recovered her smile almost instantly. “By the way, this girl you almost killed is Dorothy,” said Dean, letting go of Charlie. “She’s new here. Dorothy, this is my girl, Charlie.”

“Hi,” said Dorothy, as they shook hands.

“Hi. Sorry, I didn’t see you coming,” Charlie apologized, embarrassed.

“That’s okay, I had my mind elsewhere,” said Dorothy.

“You staying for lunch?” Dean asked.

“No, my break’s almost over,” said Charlie.

Actually she still had time, but she didn’t think she could stand Dorothy’s clear blue eyes boring into her. And her probably stinky Star Trek shirt. And her hair that probably looked like something nested in it. She needed to hide somewhere safe, like behind her cubicle where the only ones who could see her were Harry, who never seemed to notice that stuff, and her Hermione Granger bobble head, who never ever judged her.

“I’ll see you at home, then,” said Dean, kissing her on the cheek.

“Bye,” said Charlie, and put her helmet back on as fast as she could to conceal the mess. “Nice to meet you, Dorothy.”

“Nice to meet you too,” said Dorothy, as Charlie left the parking lot.

As soon as she was gone, Dorothy let out a deep breath. Okay, so she had almost been crushed by her co-worker’s girlfriend. Not the worst thing that could have happened on a Friday.

 


	3. I Will Survive

The speakers were blasting with Gloria Gaynor’s voice, and the only thing louder than that in the house was Charlie moving around the kitchen, with a clash of frying pans sizzling on the stove, coffee cups being filled and forks and spoons tossed around carelessly on the breakfast table.

Sam emerged from his room, wearing only his pajama bottoms and a pair of spectacularly awful dark circles under his eyes, and turned the music off. Charlie immediately put down the mixer she most definitely _not_ had been using as a fake microphone.

“Good morning!” she said, offering Sam her widest smile.

“What are you doing?” yawned Sam.

“I thought I would make breakfast!” said Charlie, all cheery as she served the bacon on three different plates. “Since you guys have been the best roommates ever since I moved here and I never had time to really thank you.”

“That’s really sweet,” Sam rubbed his eyes and then ran a hand through his ever growing hair. “But I was studying late last night, and I would really…”

“Oops, sorry,” said Charlie. “Go back to bed. I promise I’ll be as silent as a ninja.”

She tried balancing the plates, but slipped and stumbled on the chair. Sam barely had time to cringe before she ended on the floor, with bacon on her hair and a racket loud enough to wake anybody in the near vicinity.

“CHARLIE!” an exasperated scream came from Dean’s room, and next, the older Winchester appeared wearing his blue robe and murder in his eyes. He was _a bit_ manic about how things were done in his kitchen.

“Sorry,” said Charlie. She scrambled back to her feet and started picking up the pieces. “Sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me today. I just woke up and I was so full of energy, and then all of the sudden, gravity…”

“Gravity?” Dean repeated. “That’s your excuse? _Gravity_?”

“Why, yes, Dean!” Charlie said, waving a hand full of ceramics in his direction, still unaware of the strip of meat decorating the top of her head. “Gravity! That’s what makes people fall, you know?”

“Of course,” Dean rolled his eyes. “And I guess your newfound fondness for cooking has nothing to do with the fact you’re deflecting because Glinda left you three messages yesterday.”

Both doors from the guys’ rooms open, and Castiel and Meg emerged, one from Dean’s room and the other from Sam’s room.

“What?” said Castiel, a scandalized expression on his blue eyes, as he tugged from one of Dean’s band shirts to cover his boxers.

“The nerve of that woman!” said Meg, crossing her arms over Sam’s pajama top.

“When did you guys get here?” asked Charlie, confused. Then turned to slap Sam on the bicep. “You weren’t studying last night!”

She wasn’t even fazed anymore by Meg and Cas’ nearly constant presence in the apartment. They had this weird thing going on with the brothers, in which, generally, Cas was with Dean and Meg was with Sam, but sometimes they got bored and switched. The previous week, Charlie had walked in on Cas and Meg making out on one side of the couch, annoyed at their boyfriends, who were arguing heatedly about which of the Three Stooges was funnier without paying any attention to them.

Charlie didn’t even ask. The rent was decent and they had broadband. As far as she was concerned, the Winchesters were the best roommates she ever had.

“Don’t change the subject!” said Sam, who was such a large and strong guy Charlie couldn’t have hurt him if she had punched him with all her strength. “What did Glinda want?”

Half an hour later, the broken plates were on the garbage, Castiel was kind enough to take the bacon off Charlie’s hair, and the five were sitting each with a cup of coffee, trying to get Charlie to talk.

“Guys, it’s no big deal,” Charlie protested. She was felt cornered and a little scared by how insistent her friends were being. “She said she wanted to talk. That’s all.”

“Your exes never call you ‘just to talk’” said Meg, drawing air quotes.

“She wants something,” Dean agreed, while Castiel nodded gravely by his side. “You need to be careful.”

“Careful?” Charlie repeated, forcing a laugh that convinced exactly no one. “What you think I’m gonna do? Run back into her arms in slow motion?”

“No, of course not,” said Sam, with the little sideways smile that indicated he was about to make a smartass comment that would land him another slap. “You’re an extremely smart person, Charlie. You wouldn’t go back to the girl who made you consistently miserable for two years, would you?”

“And then cheated on you,” Meg added.

“And kicked you out even when you offered to forgive her,” pointed Castiel.

“And then wouldn’t let you see your cat,” Dean reminded her.

“Don’t bring Bilbo into this,” said Charlie, cringing. “He’s already suffered enough.”

Dean raised his hands in the air in defeat. “Look, all we’re saying is, last time it hit you pretty bad,” he said. “We don’t want you to get hurt again, okay?”

“Okay, I get it,” said Charlie, with a sigh. They could all be so pushy sometimes, but she knew they were saying it out of genuine concern for her well-being. “I’ll stay at a safe distance from Glinda. Pinky promise.”

 

* * *

 

There was a special place in Hell for people who broke pinky promises, and Charlie was going straight to it.

But then again, she hadn’t exactly _planned_ to break it by accepting Glinda’s invitation to the apartment; she only wanted to see how Bilbo was doing. And she hadn’t been the one who pushed her ex-girlfriend against a wall and started to kiss her. Honestly, nobody could’ve doubted Charlie’s good intentions, even though she was now laying on the couch with Glinda straddling her legs and doing absolutely nothing to prevent it when Glinda leaned closer and started leaving a trail of kisses from her shoulders to her neck.

But she did have a moment of clarity when she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye. Bilbo’s gray tail disappeared around the corner, and then all Charlie could focus on was the psychological consequences this would have for the cat.

“Does this mean we’re getting back together?” she asked.

“Why do you always overthink everything?” Glinda said, and sat up to remove her shirt.

Charlie was breathless for minute. She had forgotten exactly just how beautiful Glinda was, with her sun-kissed skin and her long brown hair falling on waves around her face. She couldn’t count the times she had looked at her and wondered how exactly a geeky girl like her convinced a goddess like Glinda to be her girlfriend.

She had also forgotten just how passive-aggressive Glinda could be.

“Does that mean no?” Charlie insisted before Glinda could make another move.

Glinda froze, and the smile on her face was swiftly replaced by an exasperated expression. “Really, Charlie? You just had to go and kill the moment like that?”

Charlie had also forgotten just how fluid Glinda’s movement could be, because the next second, she was alone on the couch, and Glinda was putting her shirt back on. Huh. Strange how many things she’d forgotten about the woman who got all of her undivided attention (with the exception, maybe, of Liv Tyler) for two years, in just two months.

“Look, we were just having a good time,” Glinda said, crossing her arms. “Can’t we just go back to that?”

“Yeah, I’m thinking that’s not a really good idea,” said Charlie.

Crap. They were going to start fighting, weren’t they? She didn’t want to fight. She wanted Glinda to get back on the couch and resume their making out like Charlie had never opened her mouth, but the further they stayed, the more Charlie’s rational mind took control, and the more she remembered all the midnight calls and the dodged questions.

For a smart person, Charlie had done something really stupid by going up to the apartment instead of citing Glinda on a public place where she couldn’t have been ambushed like this. Time to make a run for it, then.

“Look, I think I better go,” said Charlie, standing up.

“Yeah, I think that’s better,” said Glinda. She added nothing else, but Charlie could feel the weight of her glare as she walked towards the door. She almost made it. And then: “Go ahead, run. Like you always do.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Charlie sighed to collect her calm, and then turned around.

“You were always doing this when we were together,” said Glinda. “At the first sign of conflict, the first sign that not everything was peachy, you just walked away like denying that something’s wrong it’s gonna make it go away.”

“What can I say? I’m a pacifist,” said Charlie, in her most sarcastic tone, and adding a little shrug for effect. “What is so wrong with not wanting to have a screaming match?”

“Sometimes screaming matches are necessary,” said Glinda. “I wished you and I had a screaming match now and then, because then I would have known you cared enough to fight for us.”

“Oh, so you’re saying that you sleeping with your co-worker for months was somehow my fault for not getting mad at you enough?” groaned Charlie. In her mind, she was already fleeing down the flight of stairs and curling up under her blankets. Maybe to watch the entire trilogy of Lord of the Rings, extended edition, until she felt better.

“I made a mistake,” Glinda admitted. “A bad one. But you didn’t even try to…”

“I really don’t want to do this now, Glinda,” said Charlie. God, she wanted out. Right now.

“Of course,” said Glinda, with a roll of her eyes. Charlie took another step towards the door. “Look, I didn’t call you to fight, okay?” Glinda stopped her. “I needed to ask you something.”

“Sure,” said Charlie, rubbing her eyes. “What?”

“I’m going to Los Angeles,” Glinda stated. “I’m moving there, actually.”

Charlie was dumbstruck for a second. “What? You mean like, forever?”

“I have a job offer,” said Glinda. “An agency saw my portfolio; they want me there next week. It’s a great opportunity.”

“Oh,” said Charlie. She assumed she should have said something like ‘Congratulations!’ or ‘Good for you!’, but it simply wouldn’t come out. This was just the latest turn of the rollercoaster that the afternoon ended up being, and by now, Charlie was not sure how to handle it anymore. So she went for the practical questions. “What about Bilbo?”

“That’s the reason I called you,” said Glinda. “They don’t allow pets in my new building. He needs some place to stay.”

“Yeah, okay,” said Charlie. She was still processing the whole _‘You’re moving and I may never see you again and I suddenly feel there’s a lot of things I should say’_ , so she didn’t even consider Dean was severely allergic to cats and taking Bilbo in would probably make her homeless once again. “I can keep him.”

“Okay,” said Glinda.

They agreed on a time next week for Charlie to pick up the cat with all his things, and then she left, trying to ignore the pit in her stomach.

 

* * *

 

Charlie walked into the apartment to find Dean, Sam, Cas and Meg, all sitting on the couch and sharing a bowl of popcorn while watching a movie where a teen girl was bloodily getting axed to death.

“Hey, guys,” she greeted them on her way to the kitchen.

“Hey,” Dean let go of Castiel’s shoulders and stood up to follow her. “How’d it go?”

“Well, you know…” said Charlie, with a shrug. She had open the fridge door, but completely forgot what she was looking for. Maybe she wasn’t looking for anything and just wanted to keep her hands busy.

“That bad, huh?”

Before Charlie could come up with a change of subject or an excuse, Dean walked up to her and hugged her tight. It was always nice when he did that. Just like Sam, Dean was taller and bigger than her, so his hugs always made Charlie feel safe.

“Everything okay?” asked Sam, from the doorway. Charlie wiped her eyes swiftly.

“Yeah,” she said, putting on a smile. “Everything’s fine.”

Sam wasn’t as demonstrative as Dean, but he still patted her on the shoulder.

“Don’t worry, Charlie,” he said. “You know what they say. As long as you know how to love, you know you’ll stay alive.”

Charlie frowned. “Isn’t that from…?”

“You have all your life to live, you have all your love to give,” added Dean, with a face so solemn it was hilarious.

“You will survive!” chanted Cas and Meg from the living room.

Charlie chuckled, and suddenly, the black cloud hanging above her head seem to dissipate.

“Now, come on,” said Dean, leading her back to the living room. “We’re having a double feature _. My Bloody Valentine_ and _Friday the 13 th_.”

“Oh, and then we can follow with a _Buffy_ marathon,” Charlie suggested. “We never finished season 7.”

“Sure, why not?”

She spent the rest of the night pressed up between the brothers and fighting Meg for the popcorn bowl while Castiel kept asking questions about the plot (“I don’t understand, why isn’t she running?”) until it was four in the morning, and someone thought it was a good idea to bring up the Cards Against Humanity.

Charlie went to sleep at dawn, with her belly aching from laughing, and all thoughts of Glinda relegated to the back of her mind.

She didn’t even remember to ask Dean how he’d feel about Bilbo living with them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song referenced in this chapter is I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor. You probably already knew that.
> 
> Bilbo the Cat is named after Bilbo Baggins, because of course Charlie would call her cat that.


	4. Accidentally In Love

On Monday, Charlie appeared in Bobby’s garage with Dean’s lunch because she was trying to sweeten the whole “I’m gonna bring a cat into the apartment even though you are allergic” deal. Dean didn’t fall for it, but Charlie knew the eventual way into his heart was through his stomach.

So on Tuesday, she did it again.

“Nice try,” Dean groaned. “The vermin isn’t staying with us.”

“I know,” said Charlie, calmly. “This is your favorite apple pie, by the way.”

Dean squinted at her, but took the pie without further protesting, and Charlie left with a knowing smile.

“Troubles in Paradise?” Dorothy teased him. Dean muttered something about cat hair, and ate his pie. “You know, if you don’t want a pet, you should stand your ground,” Dorothy said, because she hated seeing a man stomped on like that.

“You’re right,” Dean said, scratching the tupper’s bottom. “I’m gonna have to be clear with her. The cat can’t stay.”

On Wednesday, Charlie “ran into” Dorothy while she was on her way to the naturalist restaurant, and very kindly asked which her favorite salad was. On Thursday, Charlie showed up with an extra tupper for Dorothy, and told them she had some extra time, so the two of them plus Dean sat on the plastic chairs in the parking lot that the mechanics sometimes used to play poker when the day was slow.

“Ellen says you haven’t lived if you hadn’t tried her vegetarian lasagna,” Charlie said.

“I didn’t know Ellen could cook things _without_ meat,” said Dean, who was actually very appalled by the discovery.

“Well, she can,” said Charlie. “And you should come with us to the Roadhouse one day,” she added, with a smile in Dorothy’s direction.

“Why?” Dorothy asked, frowning.

“Because… Dean mentioned you just moved here and you could use some friends?” Charlie suggested.

“Oh,” said Dorothy. “Well, I appreciate that very much,” she poke the lasagna with her plastic fork, not because she was very hungry, but because she needed some seconds to come up with an excuse to reject the invitation. “But I… oh, my God!”

She took a second bite. The thing just melted in her tongue, the spinach and mushrooms in perfect balance with the cheese; the flavors all soft and satisfying. Dorothy tried it again, just to make sure she wasn’t dreaming somehow.

“Oh, my God,” she repeated, resisting the urge to close her eyes and let the taste overtake her senses. “This is… this is so good!”

The look of horror in Dean’s face as he realized that whatever fragile alliance he had established with Dorothy was completely gone now was priceless to Charlie.

By the following Friday, Dean walked into the garage with a red nose, bloated eyes and a foul mood. Dorothy clicked her tongue. What a shame, she’d have to go back to tasteless salads from the naturist restaurant.

So it was a pleasant surprise when, at twelve o’clock sharp, she saw the yellow Vespa stopped at the door, and Charlie took off her helmet to let her bright red hair blow in the wind. Not that there was any wind. And of course, Dorothy had definitely _not_ begun to notice small details, like how Charlie tied the sleeves her jacket to the strap of her bag or how she always sauntered happily, like she was moving to the rhythm of a song only she could hear.

“You know, girl, if you’re gonna be a food delivery, you might as well bring food for everybody,” Bobby complained from his office’s doorway.

“I would,” said Charlie. “But then Ellen would be disappointed that you don’t show your face at her bar anymore.”

And Bobby (a sixty-something year old man, War veteran and mechanic extraordinaire) blushed like a fourteen year old girl, mumbled something unintelligible and disappear inside his office. Dorothy, who had stopped on her way to the door when Charlie showed up, fell a little in love with her. Just a little. And not literally, of course.

“Hey,” Charlie greeted her. “Where’s Dean?”

“He’s sulking somewhere,” said Dorothy. “So… I assume you got away with yours?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Charlie, and looked so pleased with herself Dorothy had to fight to suppress the smirk growing on her lips. “Bilbo is really happy at his new place.”

“You named your cat Bilbo,” said Dorothy, and she had no idea why, but she found that adorable.

“Well, he looked like a Bilbo,” Charlie shrugged.

“How does cat look like a Bilbo?” Dorothy asked, and yes, maybe she was smiling like a fool, and maybe she didn’t care.

“Well, it’s a long story,” said Charlie, as she took out the familiar tuppers from her bag. “If you want, I can tell it to you over coffee some time.”

If Dorothy hadn’t known better, she would’ve said she had just been smoothly asked for a date. Okay, she really needed to stop having those thoughts now. Charlie obviously was just being nice to her because she was Dean’s co-worker and she still didn’t really know anybody in the city. She took the tuppers with a nod.

“Thank you,” she said, taking a step backwards. “That’d be nice.”

“Right,” said Charlie. She was looking away, probably realizing how that came out. Dorothy wanted to tell her there was nothing to be embarrassed about, but Charlie was already backing down. “I gotta go. Tell Dean I was around. See you.”

“Sure. Bye,” said Dorothy, and she watched Charlie turned around and start the Vespa, mentally kicking herself for how weird she must have seemed.

 

* * *

 

“Ugh.”

That was all the commentary Charlie had to do later that day. Sam looked up from his books, but Charlie kept clicking frantically in her laptop, like killing virtual dark spawns would erase the mortification that had been hanging over her head like a black cloud all day long since lunch.

And the dark spawns killed the last of her party.

“Ugh,” Charlie repeated, slightly louder.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” said Sam, closing his notebook with a sigh. “What is your problem, Charlie?”

“I asked a girl out today,” Charlie confessed, as she leaned her head on the back of her hand.

“That’s good,” said Sam. “You’re moving on. You’re getting back on the horse.”

“Except because apparently she doesn’t play for my team,” Charlie complained. “Or maybe she just doesn’t want to play ball with me.”

“Oh, am I in time for the sexual metaphors?” asked Meg cheerfully as she walked into the kitchen. She took a beer from the fridge, sat on the chair next to Sam, and put a leg across his knees.

“ _Everything_ is a sexual metaphor with you,” said Sam, pretending to be annoyed, but the little smirk in his face gave him away.

Charlie was about to tell them not to ruin her misery with their happy couple things, when a loud meow came from the other room, followed by some swearing and a string of sneezes. A second later, Dean walked in holding a hand against his chest and groaning softly, followed by a concern looking Castiel.

“Dean, let me see it,” he said as he follow his boyfriend on the way to the sink.

“It’s fine,” Dean growled. He opened the water tap and put her hand underneath the stream while he shot a murderous look in Charlie’s direction. The effect was greatly diminished by his red nose and the dry coughing he blurted out before declaring: “Your cat is trying to kill me.”

“He most certainly isn’t!” Charlie exclaimed. “What did you do to him?”

“I did nothing!”

“He landed on him,” Castiel explained.

“You landed on Bilbo?!”

“He’s the one who pushed me to the couch!” Dean defended himself pointing at Cas.

“I was merely trying to engage in some physical display of affection,” said Cas, raising his hands to show his innocence and good intentions.

Meg snickered. “Don’t you prefer my sexual metaphors now?” she asked. Sam hid his grin behind a book.

“I can’t live like this,” Dean muttered, and sneezed again.

“Give it a few more days,” Charlie begged. “You just need to find some common ground with him…”

“He’s _a cat_ ,”Dean reminded her. “The only way we’re going to be able to exist in the same space if I get an oxygen tank and never breathe the air of my own apartment again.”

Charlie tilted her head.

“You’re not buying me an oxygen tank!” Dean exploded.

“No, that would be terribly expensive,” Charlie agreed. “But I’m thinking you don’t need to breathe the air of _this_ apartment while Bilbo is here.”

The four of them stared at Charlie the way they always did when she was trying to explain a completely foreign concept to them.

“I know he can’t stay,” Charlie admitted sadly. “But at least give me time to find him a nice home? Until then you can stay with Cas.”

Cas squinted, confused, and Meg raised her head and stared into the void like she was trying to figure out something complicated.

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “We spend so much time here is easy to forget we actually have places of our own.”

“I’m not sure my apartment is in conditions to receive a guest,” Cas said, hesitant.

“You could have sex there without Dean choking midway through,” Sam pointed.

“You make a compelling argument,” Cas decided, his expression as serious as always. “I’ll help you pack, Dean.”

“I didn’t say… wait…” Dean sneezed yet again, as his boyfriend exited the kitchen without even looking back to see if he was following him. “Okay,” Dean groaned. “But just for the weekend, until I detox from all this cat hair…”

As soon as they were out, Meg turned to Sam. “Twenty dollars says he stays there permanently.”

“Thirty dollars says that’s not gonna happen unless there’s a ring involved,” said Sam, going back to his books like betting on his brother’s future happiness was not that big a deal.

Charlie was about to point how weird that was (and just maybe make a bet on her own) when her phone vibrated.

 _Hey, it’s Dorothy_ , the messaged read. _Dean gave me your number. Hope you don’t mind. About that coffee…?_

 

* * *

 

It was a beautiful Saturday in Palo Alto. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and although it had been two months, there was definitely a summertime scent in the air. Or maybe it was that Charlie (who didn’t spend more than two minutes under the sun if she could help it) was just sick happy to be sitting on a bench in the park next to Dorothy, each holding a plastic cup. Dorothy drank green tea and Charlie drank cappuccino with extra foam.

“And so he came back after a few weeks,” Charlie said. “And I said ‘Hey, maybe he went on an adventure!’ I started calling him Bilbo and it just kinda stuck.”

It had been a tremendous effort to tell the story without even mentioning Glinda, but Charlie managed. And the little laugh Dorothy gave her was more than enough reward.

“Thank you for this,” Dorothy said, as she took the cup to her lips (Charlie had noticed her arms were all toned and tanned and had been tempted to ash if she worked out, but considered that might be too heavy a flirt for a first sorta-date). “I always have trouble making friends and such.”

“I can’t imagine why,” said Charlie, sincerely. “You are very nice.”

“That’s ‘till you get to know me,” said Dorothy, laughing again like Charlie just told her a very funny joke. “I keep trying to remind myself I have to be more… social.”

“Well, if you want, I can introduce you to my friends,” Charlie offered.

“I’m not very good with people,” said Dorothy, with a shrug. “But thanks.”

“No problem,” said Charlie. “So… why Palo Alto?”

“I don’t know,” said Dorothy. “I’ve never lived in California, and they told me the traffic in LA is a nightmare. And that, you know, you have cute university boys here.”

“Oh,” said Charlie. She gulped down the remaining of her coffee, but that didn’t soften the feeling that someone had stabbed her in the gut and was slowly twisting the knife. “Well… I wouldn’t know about that.”

“Of course not,” said Dorothy.

Suddenly a cool breeze passed through and Charlie remembered they were near the end of freaking October, and there was nothing summery about October with its stupid black and orange decorations everywhere.

“I should be heading home before it gets dark,” she said, standing up. Dorothy emptied her cup and threw it in a trashcan nearby.

“I’ll walk with you,” she said.

“You don’t have to,” said Charlie, forcing a smile. “You place is on the other side of town, and you’ll end up making a double walk, and wasting double the time…”

“Red,” Dorothy interrupted her. “I don’t mind.”

A chorus of alarms started ringing in Charlie’s head. Dorothy gave her a nickname. She gave her a freaking cute nickname, and Charlie needed to get out of there before she developed a full blown crush. Okay, a bigger crush then.

“That’s okay,” she insisted. “Really.”

Dorothy didn’t insist. Instead, she offered Charlie her hand, and the other girl held it after a second of doubt.

“Thank you,” Dorothy repeated. “I mean it.”

“Anytime,” said Charlie. She was definitely not thinking about how Dorothy’s hand was so warm on hers, and how her heart had gotten so loud she was sure everyone in five mile radio could hear it. “I guess I’ll see you at the garage.”

“Goodbye,” said Dorothy, and then she let go.

Charlie managed to take twenty steps before turning to look back, and by then, Dorothy had disappeared around the corner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, Dorothy actually plays for both teams.
> 
> The title for this chapter is a reference to the song by Counting Crows.


	5. Hey, Soul Sister

“Sam? We’re out of milk!” Meg’s voice came floating from the kitchen as soon as Charlie opened the door.

“You don’t even live here,” Charlie reminded her with a growl. She threw herself on the couch, buried her face on the pillows, and then let out a noise that was half-choking, half a sneeze. Dean was right. Bilbo was losing an insane amount of hair lately.

“Oh, hey,” said Meg, coming into the living room with the milk carton in her hand. “I thought you were on a date.”

“I thought so too,” said Charlie, miserably.

The door opened, and Sam walked in. Normally, Charlie would have made a joke about because he was so gigantic he could only get in by ducking, but she wasn’t in the mood. Especially when Sam saw her and frowned.

“You’re home early. Date didn’t go well?”

Charlie buried her face on the pillows again.

“Oh, Charlie,” said Sam. He left the bag on the living room carpet and pushed Charlie a little so he could sit next to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay. You’ll find somebody.”

“Yeah? How?” asked Charlie, skeptical.

“Well… we can introduce you to someone,” Sam suggested. “Hey, Meg, you still have the number of that girl? The one we had the threesome with?”

“Ruby?” Meg said, and grimaced like somebody had forced to lick a lemon. “Are you kidding? You do remember what happened afterwards, right?”

Sam seemed to reflect on it for a moment. “Okay, not Ruby, then.”

“Wait, what happened afterwards?” asked Charlie, whose curiosity had been piqued.

“It got creepy,” said Sam.

“There was a knife involved,” Meg added.

“We probably shouldn’t talk about it,” Sam said, and Meg agreed with a nod before going back into the kitchen. “How about Lilith?”

“Maybe,” said Meg, cautiously. “You know Lilith would hump a tree if the tree let her.”

“Oh, great, so those are my options,” muttered Charlie, rolling her eyes. “Psychopaths and desperate girls.”

She sank her face on the couch again, groaning when Bilbo took that as a sign that she had decided to get a new job as a pillow and jumped on her head, meowing.

“Ugh, I can’t do this,” Meg complained, and without too much consideration, she scared the cat off and pulled Charlie up to her feet. “Let’s go,” she added, throwing Charlie’s jacket at her.

“Okay,” said Charlie. There was no case in arguing when Meg got all headstrong and decided. “Where…?”

“Out,” Meg replied, catching Charlie’s wrist and dragging her to the door. “Don’t wait up for us,” she added in Sam’s direction.

“Have fun!” Sam said. Charlie didn’t like how amused he looked, but by the time she could come up with an argument, Meg was already closing the elevator doors behind them.

 

* * *

 

Turned out, Meg’s idea was far more inoffensive than what Charlie was imagining. True, whenever it came to Meg, Charlie felt the impulse to tell Sam that whatever he did with his life was fine, and that she loved him anyway. She had heard some really weird things the first nights Meg stayed over when Charlie had just moved in, and had adopted the healthy habit on putting on her headphones really loud when she went to sleep. It’s not that Meg was a bad person. It was just that she was the most likely to play cannibalistic, genocidal and sadomasochist answers in Cards Against Humanity.

But Meg didn’t take her to the kind of clubs Charlie had once (okay, maybe twice) confused with a Dungeons and Dragons gambling den. Instead, she took her to Meg’s workplace.

“Are you sure we can be here?” Charlie asked, nervously, as Meg introduced the key to the backdoor.

“No,” Meg answered calmly. “But I didn’t steal the alarm code to never use.”

Charlie, was trembling like a leaf as they slid inside. There were so many things that could go wrong. Meg could’ve got the code wrong. Or maybe they’d change it. Or maybe…

Meg pressed the buttons, and with a simple “beep”, they were in. Charlie closed the door behind her (after taking a sweeping look around to make sure there weren’t any cops), and Meg walked into the main saloon and turned on the lights like they weren’t abusing her key privilege. The empty chairs were doubled by the big mirror that covered the left wall, and there was an aseptic smell in the air, like the scent of cleaning products mixed with shampoo and cream. Meg gave out a happy sight and sat on one of the big armchairs clients used while they waited their turn.

“What if someone sees the lights?” asked Charlie, standing paralyzed in the middle of the saloon and fidgeting with her hands.

“We tell them we’re doing some late inventory,” said Meg, as she grabbed a magazine with Katy Perry’s face splashed on the cover. “Would you calm down already?”

Charlie wasn’t calm, but she still forced herself to sit next to Meg. She kicked a cooler open and offered her a beer.

“Why do you have this?” asked Charlie, both amazed and slightly fearful at the lengths Meg would go to have alcohol lying around.

“I stashed some weeks ago,” Meg shrugged. “When I thought Sam would pick me up and we’d have time for a quickie. But the nerd got a last minute incursion into the library to make, so…”

That was another thing that made Charlie apprehensive around Meg: it seemed there wasn’t such thing as too much information for her.

“And are you sure we don’t…?”

“Would you just chill already?” Meg rolled her eyes and practically forced the beer in Charlie’s hand. “We came here to relax. So relax.”

“I don’t see why we couldn’t have relaxed in the apartment,” Charlie complained.

“You were in a place that reminded you of your failed relationships,” Meg answered, in a tone that made Charlie think of wise mentors in epic movies and such. “We needed to get you out of there and into a new space to clear your mind.”

“I’m not sure a breaking and entering charge will help me relax,” Charlie pointed.

“Oh, please, you break into computers out of sheer boredom,” Meg reminded her.

“That’s different!”

“How?”

Charlie didn’t have a good answer to that, so she just swallowed some beer.

“Fine. I’ll try to relax,” she promised, grudgingly. Meg smiled, got up to turn the stereo and tuned in her favorite station. Charlie inhaled deeply, and wondered how long would it take for Meg to decide to end this incursion.

Half an hour later, Charlie didn’t want it to end. She was on her third beer, laughing as Meg made an exaggerated impression of the Winchesters, and with great music gently wrapping around their heads, she had finally forgotten about the Dorothy fiasco.

“No, no, but you know how they are,” Meg was saying, while Charlie practically rolled on the floor. “Dean got all mother hen, and Sam was shouting at him to stop force-feeding him soup and let him study…”

“And what did you do?” asked Charlie. She had totally missed this story, since it was back when she was still in the MIT.

“I said, ‘ _Dean, honey, it was just a sneeze,_ ’” Meg kept telling her. “ _’It doesn’t mean he’s got pneumonia or something._ ’ Dean looked at me like he was about to pull out his Dad’s old service revolver – because he probably hadn’t thought about pneumonia yet – and I got the hell out of dodge.”

Charlie could just picture Dean’s face, and it was hilarious. It was even more hilarious when Meg up and imitated her rapid escape. In less than thirty seconds, Charlie was out of breath and a Train song had started sounding on the radio. Yeah, she was feeling better after all.

“Anyway, I just made it up to Sam later,” Meg continued.

Charlie stopped laughing and wiped the tears from her eyes.

“Oh, wow,” she said, with her voice hoarse from all the laughing. “Damn, I wish I had what you guys have. Or what Dean and Cas have, I don’t…”

It was Meg’s turn to burst out laughing, like Charlie had just told her a very funny joke.

“What?” Charlie asked, confused.

“Honey, you don’t want what Sam and I have,” Meg clarified. “Maybe a little bit of what Cas and Dean have, you know, with all the romantic bullshit and the ring and…”

“Ring?” Charlie repeated, and Meg covered her mouth with both hands.

“Fuck,” she muttered between her fingers. “I wasn’t supposed to say that.”

“What ring?” Charlie insisted.

“The One Ring, we found it the other day on the street,” said Meg, casually.

“You’re not going to distract me with Lord of The Rings references,” Charlie assured her. “What ring?”

Meg sighed, defeated.

“Alright, alright,” she yielded. “Just don’t tell Cas, okay?”

A few weeks before, Dean had made a quick trip to Topeka, Kansas, to visit his mother, Mary. Apparently, Mary thought it was about time Dean settled, so she gave him an old ring that had belong to Dean’s grandfather, and said something along the lines of “No pressure, but you should totally propose to Cas.” So of course Dean was feeling the pressure and thinking about actually doing it.

“Wait, that’s why Sam bet on their engagement!” Charlie remembered suddenly.

“Right? The little cheat,” said Meg. “I made him spill the beans under torture.”

Charlie didn’t want to know the exact nature of Meg’s torture, so she continued with the proposal issue. “So is Dean gonna go for it?”

“Maybe,” Meg shrugged. “There’s no way to tell. But I’m gonna go with yes. That’s what these boys have always been told that they have to do, you know? Find someone they like, get marry, have a bunch after another of little Winchesters…”

“But you’re not on board with that,” Charlie guessed.

“God, no,” Meg shook her head like Charlie had just suggested she’d take a bath in a tub full of spiders. “And Sammy knows that, and he’s alright with it. That’s why I’m telling you what we have is a very different deal. We’re together until he meets his trophy wife.”

Charlie stared at her friend in stunned silence. She never would have thought that’s how it went. Ever since she moved to California to be near her friends, Meg had been a staple of Sam’s life, even before Dean met Cas and he joined their group. She had always assume they were the most solid, because they had been best friends for a while before getting involved, and they were always commenting their sexual misadventures, like Ruby and her knife. She always assumed that eventually, when Sam finished his specialization in criminal law, they would be the first ones to get married.

“But you love Sam,” she said, finally.

“I do,” Meg nodded. “I just don’t _love_ him. Know what I mean?”

“Not exactly,” said Charlie.

“It’s not just him,” said Meg. “I’ve never felt it. Like having butterflies in my stomach and realizing all the love songs suddenly made sense, that sort of thing? I’ve never experienced that. Not even with people I was supposed to be dating and such. I doubt I ever will. I’m just not wired that way.”

Meg took a long swig of her beer while Charlie tried to wrap her head around that.

“And I know Sam needs that sort of love,” Meg continued. “The man’s basically an overgrown puppy. You remember when he and Jess broke up? He was devastated.”

“Yeah, that was bad,” Charlie agreed. “So what’d you think is the difference? Between the love you feel and the love with butterflies and songs?”

Meg tilted her head (a gesture she had caught from Cas), and reflected on it.

“Well… maybe the difference is…” she started, the stopped, then spoke again: “Maybe the difference is, when you love someone like that, or even when you _want_ to have that sort of relationship, you can’t picture your life without them. Even for the most boring parts, like doing taxes and having kids, you want them around. I mean, I can see myself living without Sam. Or anyone, for that matter.”

“So finding someone to love is finding someone you want to do the boring stuff with,” Charlie concluded.

“Sounds about right,” Meg concluded, and finished her beer. “Hey, about _we_ do something fun?”

Charlie paled, and Meg chuckled.

“I promise you, it’s nothing illegal,” she assured Charlie.

“Okay,” Charlie sighed. “What’d you have in mind?”

“Well, we’ve got a hair salon all to ourselves,” Meg’s grinned was the very definition of mischievous. “How about a makeover?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for the lack of updates. The title of this chapter comes from the song of the same name by Train.


	6. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

Bobby was hysterical for some reason, and Dorothy hated it when people were hysterical around her. It messed with her zen.

“I said I wanted those things done by twelve, Rufus!”

“Screw you, Singer, they’ll be done when they’re done!”

“What’s with him?” Dorothy asked Dean, who had just helped her roll a car into her workshop.

“Thanksgiving’s rolling around,” Dean explained. “Ellen has yet to invite him for her annual dinner.”

“Ellen’s the lady that makes the best vegetarian lasagna ever, right?”

“I’ll tell her you said that,” Dean laughed. “You might even get invited before Bobby does. That’d be hilarious.”

“I thought she and Bobby were dating,” Dorothy asked.

“They are, but they aren’t,” said Dean.

Dorothy blinked, and waited for him to elaborate. She was never good at grasping that sort of nuances.

“They’ve been flirting with each other for ages,” Dean explained. “But they never, you know, made it official. It’s like the Schrödinger relationship, it might be there, or it might be not, and everybody has an opinion until you see them squabbling and realize they’re essentially an old married couple.”

“You better not be talking about me, boy,” said Bobby, appearing behind Dean as silently as an elderly ninja.

“’Course not,” Dean said, putting on an innocent expression that fooled no one. “I was talking about Jo and Sam.”

Bobby rolled his eyes. “The girl’s coming for Thanksgiving,” he reminded Dean. “I trust you and your brother will be perfect gentlemen and not the pair of savages that always lead her down a path of delinquency.”

“Come on now, name one time Jo got in trouble because of us!” Dean exclaimed, clearly offended.

“Summer of ’93, you made her climb the big tree by the streak,” Bobby declared, without missing a beat. “She fell and had to wear a plaster for six weeks.”

“We were kids!” Dean protested, but Bobby walked away ignoring him. “And it was Jo’s idea,” he muttered under his breath.

Dorothy chuckled, and started mixing the pain she’d be using in the car.

“Hey, how’s Charlie?” she asked, trying to sound as casual and disinterested as possible. It wasn’t like she’d noticed that Charlie had suddenly stopped coming around the workshop with Dean’s lunch. Of course not. Not at all. Why would Dorothy care? She wasn’t good people, and she never cared to be, so maybe she’d said something that offended Charlie when they went for that coffee. So what? It wasn’t like she wanted to apologize, because that’d be completely out of character for her, and…

“She’s alright,” Dean shrugged. “Still have that stupid cat in the apartment.”

“Ah,” said Dorothy. And the conversation stopped there because she didn’t know how to continue. _‘I really hope the cat causes enough problems between the two of you so you’ll break up’_ definitely sounded a little harsh.

“Yeah,” said Dean, and patted the hood of the car. “Anyway, I’ll leave you to it before Bobby gets an embolism.”

“Sure thing,” Dorothy went back to her colors, and didn’t notice Dean had stopped on the door.

“Hey,” he called her again. “If you don’t have anything else planned, I meant it. I can tell Ellen to invite you for Thanksgiving.”

“Why would you do that?” Dorothy asked, and realized by the way Dean raised his arms defensively that she’d come up a little stronger than she meant.

“Just saying,” Dean replied. “No one should be alone for the holidays.”

Dorothy wished he’d punched her in the face. At least then she’d known how to react.

“Thanks,” she answered. “I’ll… keep it in mind.”

That was the politest way she knew of telling people no, because when she _really_ told people no, it normally involved a glare and a fist. She’d been told for years she needed to tone down the aggressiveness, especially with people who’d done nothing to her. People who were actually nice and had the cutest girlfriends. People she wished were dicks so she could hate them with a reason and not feel guilty for crushing on their girlfriends. People like Dean.

Oh, well. She’d vent her frustration later. Which reminded her; she needed a new punching bag.

 

* * *

 

Charlie was finding out there were a lot of disadvantages of having Sam as the only Winchester around. It involved a lot more of quiet time, since he was always studying even though Charlie was pretty sure he had already finished each and every one of his exams and essays. It involved a lot healthier food because “those processed things you and Dean stuff your faces with can’t be good for you, Charlie.” But it also involved a lot of Meg being around and throwing chips at Sam while urging him to “live a little, dammit.” Charlie had to admit, now that she’d got to spend more one-on-one time with her, that Meg was pretty cool. Still a little scary, but actually a very rad person. Why hadn’t they become closer friends earlier? It seemed like the natural thing to happen.

And then, one windy Tuesday right before Thanksgiving, she remembered the reason.

There was a knock on the door, and Charlie looked up from her computer with a frown.

“The pizza’s too early,” she commented.

“That’s because it’s probably pre-cooked with God knows what type of preservatives,” Sam said, without looking up from his books.

“Holy crap, you’re a killjoy,” Meg protested, taking a swig from her beer.

“I’m realist, Meg,” Sam said. “Do you know what sort of chemical processes…?”

“I’ll get it,” Charlie volunteered, because she was sure that Sam knew exactly what sort of chemical processes were involved in pizza-making, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to find out.

But when she opened the door, what she got instead of pre-manufactured goodness was a ball of sunshine and a barrel of rainbows rolled in together and squashed on the happiest blonde that ever lived.

“Charlie!” Jo screamed as she pulled Charlie in for a hug so tight she was sure she heard her ribs cracking. “Oh, my God, you cut your hair! You look great!”

“Jo?!” Charlie had to stare at her friend for a couple of seconds to really process she was there: all plaid shirt and ripped jeans, and the widest smile. “What? What time did you get here?”

“Two hours ago,” Jo giggled. “Mom wanted me to help out at the bar, but I told her I had to see you guys first…”

“Jo?”

“Sam!”

“Meg!” Meg joked, raising her beer while Jo ran to put her arms around Sam as he lifted her several inches above the floor in pure joy.

“It’s so good to see you!” Sam exclaimed. “I missed you!”

“I missed you too, gigantor,” Jo laughed. “Where’s Dean?”

“Oh, he’s at Cas’,” Sam said.

“What, on a school night?” Jo frowned and looked from Sam to Charlie and back to Sam, like demanding an explanation. “It’s _that_ serious?”

“It’s deadly serious,” Meg said, crooking an eyebrow.

“Oh,” Jo’s happy smile froze like a winter breeze had just gone across her face. “You’re still here.”

“I am indeed,” Meg showed her biggest grin, the one that made Charlie thought she was perfectly capable of skinning puppies to make a coat with their fur. The two girls stared at each other so intensely it was hard to tell if they wanted to kill each other or aggressively make out. Sam cleared his throat.

“Well, Jo I’m really glad you stopped by,” he said. “The pizza should be here at any minute now…”

“Weren’t you studying for that thing?” Meg reminded him.

“Oh, I interrupted your study? I’m sorry,” said Jo.

“I can postpone it…” Sam tried to say.

“Not at all!” Meg exclaimed.

“Your academic career is more important than anything,” Jo agreed, grabbing Sam by one arm while Meg grabbed him by the other. “I’m sure the girls and I will find something to do.”

“Yes, go back to your books, darling,” Meg insisted, as they both practically pushed him towards his notebooks and notes spread on the kitchen table. “Jo, Charlie and I are just gonna… have a girl’s night out or something.”

“Oh, yes, a girl’s night out with you,” Jo rolled her eyes, as she closed the kitchen door behind Sam. “Everything I ever dreamed of.”

“Sweetie, sarcasm doesn’t sound good on you,” said Meg, tilting her head in the most condescending way Charlie had ever seen.

“Don’t ‘sweetie’ me, sweetie,” Jo replied through gritted teeth. “Let’s just act like ladies and take this elsewhere.”

“You got it,” Meg finished her beer in one long gulp and turn to Charlie. “You coming?”

Charlie looked at Jo, with her arms crossed over her chest and looking like she’d like nothing more in the world than to wrap her hands around Meg’s neck, and Meg, who seemed an inch away from breaking her bottle and using it to slash Jo’s throat.

“I have to make a call first,” Charlie declared, and left the room swiftly because if murder was about to ensue, she didn’t want to witness it.

 

* * *

 

Dorothy had just sat in front of the TV with a steaming bowl of smoked vegetables when her phone rang.

“Hello?”

And then the last person she expected to hear said three little words that turned her pleasant evening upside down:

“I need you.”

 

* * *

 

 

Dorothy wasn’t good at this whole human relationship bullshit, but she was pretty sure it was written in stone somewhere that you couldn’t blow off someone for weeks on end and then call them up, apologize and say that you needed them. That wasn’t how it worked.

So if you asked her why she’d put on her best brown leather jacket, why she’d practically flown downstairs towards her bike, and why she’d spent an hour searching for the bar Charlie had mentioned, Dorothy would have told you it was because there were some matters she needed to settle with Charlie, and it was best if she did it face to face.

She’d be lying, of course.

Charlie was waiting for her outside, and when Dorothy saw her, it was like all her will force was sucked into a black hole and sent into some parallel universe where she told Charlie exactly what she meant to say, then gone back home, heated her bowl of vegetables in the microwave and resumed her dinner like she had planned to. In that parallel universe, Charlie hadn’t got a pixie haircut that made her eyes look bigger and all around cuter, and she wasn’t wearing the most adorable white vaporous blouse, and she didn’t smile at Dorothy when she saw her.

“Hey!” Charlie said, and the relief in her voice was the kind you only hear in movies when the hero sees his girlfriend survived the bad guy’s attack. “You made it!”

In a parallel universe, Dorothy wouldn’t have been disarmed by that. But in this universe, she just smiled back.

“Yeah,” she said. “Been thinking about what you said. Maybe I do need to get out more. And you mentioned something about a potential massacre, so… I figured that’d be entertaining.”

“Yes,” Charlie cringed. “About that…”

Two laughing girls, one blond and one brunette, popped their heads outside.

“Charlie, come in!” the blonde said.

“You’re missing all the fun!”

Charlie stared at her shoes while her face turned a shade of red that wasn’t humanly possible.

“Turns out things weren’t quite as bad…”

 

* * *

 

Jo had dated Sam back in middle school, but in fact she’d been harboring a not-so-subtle crush on Dean for years, which led to their eventual break-up. Then, when Sam graduated and got accepted in Stanford, the Winchesters moved to Palo Alto, where Sam dated a couple of girls before ended in whatever-it-was he had with Meg.

“Wait, I thought Dean had worked for Bobby since he was a teenager,” Dorothy asked, confused. No one could blame her: it was hard to follow that convoluted story with some guy doing a horrible render of _She Bang_ in the background.

“Yes, Bobby was a friend of their dad, and Mom and I need were their neighbors while we all lived in Lawrence,” Jo explained. “Then Bobby inherited an old friend’s workshop here, which prompted Sam to try and get into Stanford to be near him, and Dean came too because they’re a buy one, get one free deal. You can’t have one without the other.”

“It’s _weird_ ,” Meg nodded.

“It’s not weird, they’re just very close since their parents divorced,” Charlie intervened. “That’s when they moved to Topeka, which is where I met them.”

“Then I graduated, and got into LAMA, which is why mom decided to come to California too, to be near me, but ‘not too near,’” Jo said, drawing air quotes. “Like I didn’t know what she really wanted was to get it on with Bobby again.”

“Okay, I understand all of that,” said Dorothy, although that wasn’t quite true. “But I thought you guys didn’t like each other?” she added, pointing at Jo, and then at Meg.

“Pfff, no,” Meg chuckled. “We just do that to make Sam nervous.”

“Why?” Dorothy asked, and Charlie nodded like she needed an explanation as well.

“Because his face is priceless,” Jo declared, and she high-fived Meg over the empty shots of tequila on the table.

“Another round!” Meg ordered, gesturing at the waiter, which was by their table in less than half a minute. “This place is dead!”

“It’s because is Tuesday,” Charlie reminded her.

“No, it’s because the party doesn’t start until we say it starts,” Jo stated, after chugging her tequila. “Does any of you, ladies, sing?”

Dorothy was pretty sure the panic in Charlie’s face was a mirror to hers, so she did the only thing that felt sane under those circumstances: she reached for Charlie’s hand under the table. To her relief, Charlie squeezed tight, and didn’t let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this chapter is, of course, a reference to the Cindy Lauper song.


	7. (You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman

There was a brief window that Tuesday night in which Charlie and Dorothy could have pulled Meg and Jo out of that bar with the excuse they would have to face Ellen Harvelle’s special brand of rage if Jo got home excessively late, but then they found out the DJ had _Lady Marmalade_ amongst the karaoke options, and that was when their possibilities of making a gracious exit began spiraling down.

After they were dragged on stage and force them to take the parts of Pink and Lil’Kim (which, in Charlie’s opinion, was a disaster comparable only to a nuclear bomb dropping), Dorothy and Charlie made a point to disappear in the quieter part of the bar while Meg and Jo attacked _Man! I Feel Like A Woman_ with more passion than Shania Twain herself.

“Well, at least they’re having fun,” Dorothy commented, with a crooked eyebrow as a group of admirers gathered around the stage and started screaming and cheering.

“I’m sorry,” Charlie apologized for the hundredth time that night. “I thought we were just going to have some drinks and that we’ll have to keep them from going at each other’s throat. I had no idea they would be this…”

“Friendly?” Dorothy suggested. “Loud?”

“I’m sorry,” Charlie repeated, looking at her shoes. Dorothy laughed and put a hand on her shoulder.

“It’s fine, Red,” she assured her. “I’m actually kinda enjoying this.”

“Really?”

“No,” Dorothy shook her head. “You have no idea how much I wanna go home right now.”

“Well, they’re distracted,” Charlie pointed, since the audience was requesting an encore. “We could just…”

“I’ll get our jackets, and meet you at the door in two minutes,” Dorothy proposed, a little faster than she meant.

“I’ll leave them a message with the bartender,” Charlie said, standing up.

They stared at each other for ten seconds, taking in just how easy it had been to agree on that, and they got moving. Dorothy snaked towards the coat check with no problems, but Charlie’s way to the counter was unfortunately obstructed by a rather muscular guy. Unfortunate for the guy, as it would turn out.

“Hi, baby,” the guy greeted her with a big smile. “I’m Gerry.”

“Hi, Gerry,” Charlie answered. “I’m leaving. Excuse me.”

She tried to move past him, but Gerry moved to block her path again.

“Why?” he asked. “Your friends are having a lot of fun, you wouldn’t want to be a buzz kill, would you?” he pointed at the stage with his beer.

“I’m not killing their buzz,” Charlie argued, but Gerry elected not to hear her. Gerry was making a lot of bad decisions that night, like, for example, taking an unwelcome step into Charlie’s personal space.

“You know, you’re so pretty,” he commented. “Why would you cut you hair like that? Guys like girls with long hair.”

Charlie immediately started to cast frantic looks in the stage’s direction, but Meg and Jo were too busy getting into _Wannabe_ to notice.

“Woah, Gerry, that’s very interesting,” Charlie said, and moved forwards, but Gerry kept moving right and left whenever she tried to go around him. “But, umh… I really have to go now…”

“No, come on,” Gerry insisted. “The night’s young!”

“It’s a Tuesday night,” Charlie said, because she was starting to panic at this point, and when she panicked, she got bad at comebacks.

“The week’s young,” Gerry laughed.

“Hey, dude,” Dorothy’s voice came loud and clear above the music, and Charlie had never been happier to see anyone in her life. “My friend’s not interested. Take a hint.”

“Oh, don’t worry, hot stuff,” Gerry said, turning to Dorothy with a grin. “There’s plenty of me to share.”

And that was possibly the worst of all of Gerry’s bad decisions.

 

* * *

 

Ten seconds later, while they were running down the street hand in hand towards Dorothy’s bike, Charlie was still in shock.

“Oh, my God!” Charlie kept saying.

“Charlie, I’m so sorry,” now it was Dorothy who wouldn’t stop apologizing. “I didn’t mean to ruin your night like this…”

“ _Oh, my God!_ ” Charlie said again. “I can’t believe you… you actually…”

Dorothy felt the impulse to look away, because she was convinced now was the part when Charlie told her she was a social misfit and that she didn’t want to see her or talk to her again until Dorothy got a grip of her anger management issues. Instead of that, Charlie burst into laughter.

“I can’t believe you hit him!” she screamed. “That was _awesome_!”

“Hey, are you okay?” Jo said, coming out of the bar followed closely by a concerned Meg.

“What the hell happened?”

“Dorothy… hit a guy!” Charlie told them, in between chuckles. “He wouldn’t leave me alone and she totally saved my ass!”

“Say what?” Jo asked, and carefully moved a little further from Dorothy.

“Good one!” Meg raised her hand. It took Dorothy thirty seconds to register she was supposed to high-five her.

“Guys, what if they charge Dorothy for assault or something?” Jo pulled them back to reality.

“Well, the way I see it,” Meg started, as she casually waved for a passing taxi to stop. “They can’t unless they catch us.”

“That is not…” Jo started to protest, but then the bar door open again, and Gerry appeared followed by the DJ and the bartender, holding a can of frozen beans against his eye.

“There they are!” he screamed, pointing at them.

“Go, go, _go_!” Jo shouted, as she lunged herself inside the taxi.

Charlie didn’t even think about it until they were two blocks away and speeding down the Avenue, but it was like jumping on the back of Dorothy’s bike, putting her hands around her waist and holding tight against her back was the absolutely most natural reaction to have at the moment. The air hitting against Charlie’s face brought her a scent of leather and herbs, and she realized it was because her nose was practically sunk in Dorothy’s hair. But she couldn’t move away without messing with their balance, and besides… she didn’t really want to. So she just rested her head between Dorothy’s shoulder blades, and closed her eyes for a moment.

“Where to, Red?” Dorothy asked when they stopped in the corner.

“I don’t know,” Charlie felt elated for some reason. She didn’t want to let go of Dorothy, and she didn’t want the night to end just yet. Dorothy seemed to notice.

“Wanna come to my place for a while? We’re ten minutes away,” she invited her, and Charlie found out it was possibly to feel warm inside even in the coldest November night.

 

* * *

 

“Yeah, we’re fine,” Charlie informed Meg on the phone. “I’m at Dorothy’s. Yeah. Meg, please. Okay, good night.”

Dorothy heard the conversation form the kitchen (it wasn’t really eavesdropping, her apartment was basically one big room) while she served some tea, and thought, not for the first time, that Charlie had an adorable giggles. Everything about Charlie was adorable. Dammit, she’d got it bad.

“She and Jo are fine,” Charlie informed her, as she walked up to her. “I had the feeling Ellen wasn’t done screaming at them yet.”

“Ellen sounds like a tough woman,” Dorothy commented, offering her a cup. “And Meg seems like the kind of person that will lead you into a life of crime.”

“Well, you got that right,” Charlie commented, sitting on the couch in front of the coffee table. “What if Jo’s right, though?” she added, frowning. “What if he tries to find you or something?”

“Come on, now, Red,” Dorothy dismissed the idea with a hand gesture. “Like he’s gonna admit to someone he got his ass kicked by a girl.”

“Yeah. That was pretty badass of you,” Charlie laughed, and tasted the tea. Her eyes shot wide open, and then closed with pleasure as she swallow. “I wanna marry this tea,” she declared.

“It’s just jasmine,” Dorothy explained, blushing. She didn’t have many chances to presume her tea-making skills. “With a bit of cinnamon and honey.”

“It’s the most awesome thing I ever tasted,” Charlie insisted, and as if to prove it, she took one long gulp, and then moved to let the cup on the coffee table.

“No, wait!” Dorothy’s scream almost made Charlie jump out of her skin. “Dammit, I forgot to move them!”

It was only then that Charlie noticed several sheets of paper spread across the coffee table. She barely had time to catch some forms drawn with charcoal before Dorothy rapidly got them together and moved them to the desk next to the window.

“Wait,” Charlie stood up to follow her. “You did those?”

Dorothy blushed even more. She definitely wasn’t use to people watching her drawings.

“They’re just rough sketches,” she said, as Charlie examined them. To her relief, she didn’t try to touch them or move them to see the ones hidden underneath. Dorothy was pretty sure there was one with Charlie’s face in it, and she didn’t feel like having that conversation.

“They’re really nice,” Charlie said, smiling. “I mean, I don’t know a lot of art, but I really like these, and… you got a punching bag,” she added, pointing at it.

“Oh, I should have put that away,” Dorothy wanted the earth to swallow her. This was even more embarrassing than being forced on a stage to ask a bunch of guys if they wanted to sleep with her in French.

“Okay,” Charlie let out another giggle, but Dorothy had the impression it was forced. “You make tea, you draw, you box… is there something you can’t… is that the Eiffel Tower?”

The change of subject was so abrupt Dorothy barely realized Charlie was now pointing at a picture at the edge of her desk.

“Umh… yeah,” she said. She was so flustered at this point she had totally lost the capacity to form coherent sentences.

“The one that’s in Paris?” Charlie asked. “Paris, as in… France? You’ve been to France?”

“I’ve… been everywhere,” Dorothy admitted.

Twenty minutes later, they were in the second cup of jasmine tea, and at Charlie’s insistence, Dorothy searched for all her photo albums (most of them were in the boxes she still hadn’t come around to open) and showed them to her.

“And this is Venice,” Dorothy pointed at another picture that showed her and her stepmother, Josie, on a gondola, waving for her father, who had taken the picture.

“So it’s true you have to navigate everywhere?” Charlie asked. Her eyes were shining bright, and she was hanging on every word Dorothy said.

“Yes. You see, the sea keeps advancing over the city, and it’s going to be completely sunk in a few decades,” Dorothy commented. She wasn’t used to that kind of undivided attention, and she had to admit, coming from Charlie, she kinda liked it.

“That’s really cool,” Charlie commented. “I mean, not that Venice is sinking, but that… you’ve been to all this wonderful places,” she added, open her hands as if to indicate the whole wide world.

“Yeah, well, you know, my dad’s a writer,” Dorothy explained. “And he says, the only way to get to know yourself is if you get to know the world. So we would travel a lot. These are the fun times where we stayed in places with actual beds and stuff,” Dorothy said. “One time, we drove all the way to the Grand Canyon from freaking New York. We slept in crappy motels and stopped at every single roadside attraction that came our way.”

“No!” Charlie laughed.

“Yes,” Dorothy nodded, and cringed at the memory. “And another time, my dad decided we’ve been visiting cities for too long and that we should have a taste of a more relaxed lifestyle, so we spent the summer at Uncle Henry and Aunt Em’s farmhouse…”

“Wait, you have an Uncle Henry and an Aunt Em?” Charlie interrupted her. “And they have a farm?”

“Believe me, I get the irony,” Dorothy chuckled. “Anyway, I almost went insane. We were miles away from the nearest town and I still hadn’t got my driver’s permit. We would wake up at dawn, and go to sleep by sundown. It was a nightmare. When I went back to school, all my friends had these stories of what they did: _‘I went to Disneyland’_ , or _‘I went to the beach’_ , and I was like _‘That’s really cool, guys. I learnt to manually milk a cow’_.”

“You did?” Charlie asked.

“It was fun until Betsy got all kick-y,” Dorothy shrugged, and Charlie laughed so hard she actually fell of the couch, which prompted Dorothy to bust up and then there was ten uninterrupted minutes of them trying to catch their breaths.

“Oh, God,” Charlie gasped, as she wiped the tears from her face and sat back up. “I wish I had stories like that. The furthest I’ve been from home is Massachusetts.”

“What were you doing there?” Dorothy asked, genuinely interested. Charlie swallowed a couple of times.

“Uh… studying,” she said, and suddenly she seemed nervous. “I had a scholarship for the MIT.”

“Woah, Charlie, that’s… that’s really impressive,” Dorothy said. She knew Charlie was smart, she didn’t suspect she was that smart. “What happened?”

“Umh…”

Any trace of amusement was now gone from Charlie’s face, and Dorothy realized she had screwed up majorly.

“I’m sorry,” she said, immediately. “You don’t have to tell me.”

“No, no, it’s okay,” Charlie said. “It’s just… well, it’s a long story.”

It turned out Charlie’s parents had been in an accident when she was thirteen years old. Her father had died, but her mother was left in a vegetative state. Charlie had spent the rest of her teenage years in foster care. Dorothy didn’t know what to say. Her own mother had died when she was two, but it was hardly the same thing, because she’d still had Josie growing up.

“But it wasn’t all bad,” Charlie assured her. “I met Sam and Dean, and we would get in trouble together… well, until I went to the MIT, that is. I was there for two years, and everything was going alright, but then…”

Charlie’s mother had died. No one could explain why. She was on life support, but her heart stopped anyway. Charlie had sunk into a deep depression, and she wasn’t able to keep her grades up. She’d lost the scholarship and was forced to drop out. She had absolutely nowhere to go.

“That’s awful,” Dorothy said. “What did you do?”

“I called Dean,” Charlie said. “And he told me _‘Come to us, baby. We’ll always have a place for you.’_ So I did, and he and Sam helped me get back on my feet. And that’s how I ended here.”

“Dean’s a solid guy,” Dorothy commented, and she really hoped the bitterness she felt didn’t reflect in her voice.

“Oh, yes, he is,” Charlie nodded. “I’m very lucky to have him in my life.”

An awkward silence fell between them. Dorothy wanted to tell Charlie just how much she admired her for still being able to laugh and see the positive side of things despite everything she went through, that it was a rare strength only few people had and that maybe she was a little bit more in love with her for it… Woah, what the hell? Dorothy shook her head and looked at the clock. Well, that explained everything.

“It’s four in the morning,” she commented, rubbing her eyes. Of course. She always thought stupid things when she was up that late.

“Oh, God,” Charlie covered her mouth with her hands. “I _so_ overstayed my welcome. I’m gonna call a cab, and…”

“No, Red, don’t be ridiculous, you can sleep in my bed,” Dorothy said, and that provided her with a whole new set of stupid thoughts. “I mean, this couch unfolds… I think. I haven’t tried it yet.”

“No, no, if you really want me to stay, I’ll take the couch,” Charlie offered.

“Okay, first let’s figure out how it works,” Dorothy proposed.

It was another half an hour until they managed to get the couch to their bidding, and then Dorothy had to open yet more boxes to find an extra set of blankets, and then they spent some good fifteen minutes arguing over who should sleep in the bed. They ended up tossing a coin because that was the more democratic method, and Charlie got the bed, but made a point to not going to sleep without a lot of protesting.

Finally, at the hour when Dorothy was usually waking up, they turned off the lights. Charlie closed her eyes and was immediately slumbering (Dorothy could see the outline of her body through the ajar door of her bedroom), but it took a little longer for her host. She was trying to remember when was the last time she had so naturally spent a whole night just talking with a girl. She had forgotten how good it felt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this chapter is a reference to the song by Miss Aretha Franklin.


	8. The Girl Is Mine

“Hello? Anybody home?” Dean called, as he closed the door behind him.

“Woah, oh my God!” Sam exclaimed from the couch where he was reading, feigning a horror expression. “You know, I used to have a brother who looked just like you.”

“Very funny,” Dean rolled his eyes at him and proceeded to pass him on his way to the kitchen.

“Holy shit!” Charlie shouted from behind her laptop, and pretended to fall from her chair. “Are you real? Speak to me, apparition!”

“I leave for a couple of weeks and everybody turns into a comedian,” Dean complained, throwing his arms in the air exasperatedly.

“Did you run out of clean clothes?” Charlie asked.

“No,” Dean said, but Charlie glanced at his duffle bag, and then arched an eyebrow at him. “Okay, yes,” he admitted.

“Good!” Charlie got up and ran to her room only to get back with her own bag of used clothes. “We can catch up while we wash these!”

Five minutes later, they were in the building’s basement, laughing loudly at some stupid joke Dean made. Charlie realized, with a pang, that she had missed having Dean around.

“So, how’s Cas?” she asked him, innocently.

“He’s fine, why you ask?” Dean retorted, defensively, as he started throwing his clothes into the washing machine.

“Well, you know, I haven’t seen him around much,” she said. She just couldn’t pass such a perfect opportunity to tease him. “Not since around you decided to lock him up in his apartment and have sex with him twenty-four seven.”

“Okay, first of all,” Dean began, raising a finger at the same time his ears went red. “We don’t just stay in and have sex. We go out. We have jobs we show up to, every day. Unlike other people.”

He threw a significant glance in Charlie’s direction, who developed a sudden interest in the detergent’s ingredients.

“Yeah, because Dorothy called in sick this morning,” Dean continued. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“Nope,” Charlie lied. Still, she couldn’t bite back a smirk when she remembered Dorothy that morning (well, more like that midday), in her tank top and with her long hair tied up in a messy bum, as she fixed Charlie another cup of jasmine tea along with some toasts.

“Really? Because Jo said you left with her last night…”

“What? Were you tracking me or something?” Charlie asked, pretending to be offended but failing miserably since her head was still filled with happy images of a groggy Dorothy.

“Yes,” Dean confessed, bluntly. “I needed to ask you a favor for Bobby, and you were nowhere to be found. So… spit it out.”

He gently pushed Charlie with his shoulder, and she decided against making a crude sex joke.

“There’s nothing to tell,” she said. “Yes, I left with her, and yes, we stayed up late… talking.”

Dean hummed skeptically.

“It’s true!” Charlie insisted. “She doesn’t even play for my team.”

“Not that it means anything,” Dean pointed. “Seriously, look at me: I spent years thinking I was an upstanding heterosexual and now I’m practically engaged to a guy.”

He went dead silent, as he had just realized the weight of what he was implying, as Charlie stared at him openmouthed.

“You’re proposing to Cas?!” she practically screeched.

“I-I… well, it… it’s… I don’t…” Dean stuttered.

“That’s the best news ever!” Charlie kept screaming.

“Okay, don’t start trying to catch the bouquet just yet,” Dean cut her off. “We’ve… talked about it, but not… _really_ talked about it.”

“But you already have the ring,” Charlie pointed.

Dean took a step backwards and stared at Charlie like she had just made the crudest of all sex jokes.

“Who told you that?” he asked with his eyes wide open in fear.

“Meg,” Charlie said, with a shrug.

“Who the hell told Meg?”

“Who do you think?”

Dean hit his forehead against his open palm, and then rubbed his face. “I’m going to kill him,” he declared.

“What’s wrong?” asked Charlie, who was always amused to see Dean panic for the smallest of things.

“What if Meg told Cas?” he pointed, waving his arms as if to illustrate just how grave the situation was. “What if he knows that I have the ring? Now I _have to_ propose!”

“Dean, Dean, breathe,” Charlie put her hands on his shoulder (for which she had to stand up on the tip of her toes). “You don’t _have to_ do anything, okay? If Castiel knows you have the ring, he’ll just think you’re waiting for the right time to bring it up. And when that time comes… you’ll know.”

Dean blinked, like he was processing Charlie’s words.

“Oh my God, that was so corny,” he concluded.

“Yes, it was,” Charlie cringed. “But it’s true, though.”

“I know,” Dean nodded. “Come here, you giant nerd.”

They hugged tight until the machines were finished with their clothes.

 

* * *

 

Charlie spent the rest of that very pleasant evening folding her freshly washed clothes, and then snuggling in the couch with Dean and some snacks. They caught some stupid movie about survivors in an apocalyptic wasteland, and crossed bets on who would make it to the end of the movie. Dean’s last bet had just died when Meg walked in.

“Heya, losers,” she greeted them.

“Why do you have a key?” asked Dean, frowning. Sam emerged from his room and Dean pointed an accusing finger at him. “Why does she have a key?”

“Meg?” Sam asked, completely ignoring his brother. “What are you doing here? Did we have a…?”

“Nope,” said Meg, walking up to him to throw her arms around his neck. “This is a booty call.”

“Oh, my God, seriously?!” Dean protested.

“Can you guys at least wait until we leave the room?” asked Charlie, shaking her head disapprovingly.

They didn’t have to move. Softly, Sam slipped away from Meg’s embrace.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, looking contrite. “I… can’t right now.”

Dean raised an eyebrow and exchanged a confused look with Charlie, as Meg stared at Sam like she thought he’d gone insane.

“I promised Jo I would go to the bar and help her prepare everything for tomorrow’s dinner,” said Sam, avoiding her gaze. “You know, do some clean-up and such.”

“That sounds incredibly boring,” Meg said.

“Yes, it probably will be,” Sam admitted. “But she asked me to, and I just couldn’t…”

Charlie saw it on Meg’s face a second before she understood it herself. She tensed her shoulders, waiting for Meg to have some sort of reaction, like screaming at Sam or insisting for him to stay, but instead, Meg nodded and took a step backwards.

“That’s okay,” she interrupted his excuses. “Go. A promise is a promise.”

“Thank you,” Sam said, kissing her on the cheek while on his way to the door. “I’ll make it up to you. See you, guys.”

“Bye,” answered Dean, still with his eyes fixed on the screen. Meg sat next to Charlie, blinking as if trying to assimilate what just happened.

“Well, would you look at that,” she commented.

“Are you alright?” Charlie asked, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Meg assured her, but her face was a mask of astonishment. “It’s just… I thought we had a little longer.”

“Had a little longer for what?” Dean asked, stuffing his face with some chips.

“Maybe it doesn’t mean anything,” Charlie tried to cheer her up. “Because it’s… it’s Jo.”

“What about Jo?” Dean kept asking, obviously completely lost.

“Yeah, it’s Jo,” Meg repeated, like she was analyzing a very complex problem. In the end, she just raised her eyebrows and shrugged. “Guess it kinda makes sense, though.”

“What makes sense?!” Dean exploded. “What you guys on about?”

Charlie turned to him, and couldn’t hold back a giggle at the bewilderment on his face. Meg openly laughed at him, and snatched the bag of chips from his hands.

“Nothing you need to worry about, Winchester,” she guaranteed. “I just really hope your mom has enough rings.”

And that made Dean completely forget about their conversation, as he launched into a rant about how Meg needed to keep her mouth shut around Castiel. Meg had to promise she would three times before Dean dropped the issue, and by then, all the characters in the movie had been relentlessly killed.

 

* * *

 

Dorothy didn’t see Charlie again until after the holidays, when she literally ran into her at the garage’s door.

“Hey, Dorothy!” Charlie greeted her, her whole face lighting up with that huge grin that made Dorothy’s heart skip a beat. “How you’ve been? How did you spend Thanksgiving?”

Dorothy didn’t want to tell her she’d spent it wrapped in a blanket trying to get back the sleep she lost the night they spent talking, and then watching a stupid movie about apocalyptic survivors, so she went off on a tangent.

“Umh… Dean left early today…”

“Oh, yeah, he had some things to do,” said Charlie, moving her hands as if to dismiss the whole thing. “Pick some leftovers at Ellen’s and drive Jo to the bus station… he said he’d come for me in an hour or so. I’m supposed to fix Bobby’s computer.”

“Oh, I thought I heard him screaming at it,” Dorothy commented. “You want me to keep you company?”

“No, go ahead,” Charlie said. “It’s going to be just me sitting around. Really boring…”

“I don’t mind,” said Dorothy, and only when the words left her mouth she realized just how fast she’d said it. Oh, God, she was making such a fool of herself. “I mean, if you want me to…”

“I’d… love you to, yes,” said Charlie, and maybe Dorothy imagined it or maybe it was a light effect, but she could have sworn Charlie’s cheeks had gone just a little bit pink.

What followed was half an hour of Charlie spouting technical jargon while she typed really fast in Bobby’s computer. Dorothy didn’t understand half of it, and got the impression Charlie was speaking out of nervousness. But she still listened to every single thing Charlie said, while she watched her with her chin resting in her hand.

“There,” Charlie concluded, while pushing a CD inside the CPU. “That will clean the hard drive, and then everything should run smoothly.”

“I’m sure Bobby will be grateful,” Dorothy nodded. “You know your eyes light up when you talk about these things? It’s very cute.”

The pink in Charlie’s cheek was definitely there this time, and Dorothy felt the sudden urge to rip out her own tongue.

“I didn’t mean to say that out loud,” she apologized.

“Oh, no, it’s okay, I-I, uh…” Charlie was looking away, and going even redder now. “No one has made me a compliment like that in a while.”

Dorothy was about to ask what was wrong with Dean and why he didn’t compliment Charlie every single day of his life, when the man himself appeared at the door of Bobby’s office, carrying his leather jacket in his hands.

“Hey, girls,” he greeted them, with his usual smile. “We done here?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Charlie stood up, stumbled on her chair and turned on her spot a couple of times, like she wasn’t really sure what to do with herself. “I just… I’m gonna… yeah, we’re done…”

“Okay, sweet thing,” Dean almost laughed at her, and Dorothy’s desire to punch him in the face intensified. How could he not appreciate the beauty that was his girlfriend all flustered? Dorothy would praise her every single day, for every little thing she did… she really needed to stop thinking along those lines.

Dean activated the alarms and was just about to close the doors, when Charlie realized she had left her bag back in Bobby’s office. So instead of walking with her, Dean just gave her the codes and said he’d wait for her in the streets.

“That girl would lose her head if it wasn’t attached to her neck,” he commented. Dorothy had to get out of there before she did something she could regret, so she told Dean she had to go home.

“Bye,” she said, and Dean nodded. When he turned around, she noticed something falling from his jacket. “Wait, you drop your… little… red box,” Dorothy’s heart sank as she picked it up. “That… probably contains an engagement ring…?”

“Oh, my God, thanks,” it was Dean’s turn to look absolutely embarrassed as he took it back form Dorothy and hid it inside his jacket pocket again. “I’ve been carrying this thing around for weeks. I don’t know what to do with it.”

“Well… I’ve heard it normally involves a very serious question.” Dorothy stuttered. “A life changing question. A question you have to be very, very sure you want to ask.”

“Honestly, I’ve been sure since our first date,” Dean laughed, as he rubbed the back of his neck. “But, you know…”

“Scared of the answer?”

“Terrified,” Dean admitted. “Yeah, I keep thinking maybe the time isn’t right, maybe we are not quite ready…”

“Well…” Dorothy began, and she could practically hear her brain going haywire and running out of coherent things to say. “Sometimes you just don’t know you’re ready until you actually go for it.”

As stupid as that sounded to her, Dean looked up like he’d just had some sort of epiphany.

“Huh. You’re actually right,” he said. “Thank you, Dorothy.”

“Why are you thanking me?” Dorothy asked, feeling a cold pool of horror forming in her stomach. “What did I say?”

Dean patted her on the back, as Charlie came back running.

“There,” she said, with a relieved smile. “I’d lose my head if it wasn’t attached to my neck.”

“That’s what I keep saying,” Dean closed all the doors again, and then threw an arm around Charlie’s shoulders. “Night, Dorothy.”

“See you,” Charlie greeted her.

And Dorothy watched them walk away, with the sensation she had just made the most stupid mistake of her entire existence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this chapter is a reference to the Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney song of the same name :)


	9. Hello, Goodbye

In years to come, Charlie would always try to unsuccessfully pinpoint the exact action that set in motion the chain of events that’d culminate with her and Dorothy dating. When asked about it, all their friends had different versions of it, and not even Dorothy would agree with her on which was the first domino to fall.

In Charlie’s opinion, it was that Saturday morning, a couple of weeks after Thanksgiving, when she woke up, walked into the kitchen and found on Dean staring at her laptop like it was going to bite him.

“How do you turn on this thing?” he asked, with a crunched face of panic Charlie would’ve found hilarious if she hadn’t been in her usual early morning crankiness.

“You push the button,” she explained, as she poured the coffee in her favorite cup.

“Which button?” Dean asked, annoyed.

“Thank God you’ve definitely gone gay then,” Charlie muttered, as she sat next to him and turned on her computer. Dean glared at her.

“You’ve been hanging out with Meg too long,” he declared, and then raised his hands above the keyboard like he wasn’t sure how to start writing. “Where’s the browser?”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Charlie groaned, and pull the computer next to her.

“Well, it’s not my fault if you get a new unknown sci-fi gadget every time I blink!” Dean complained.

“I’ve had this computer for two years!” she pointed. “And it’s not _my_ fault if you avoid anything technological like it was the goddamn plague!”

Sam opened the kitchen’s door, saw Bilbo fleeing from the drama, and decided to follow him into the living room.

“What do you need, anyway?” asked Charlie.

Dean opened his mouth, closed it again and tapped his fingers on the table.

“It’s… personal,” he mumbled.

“You’re not watching hentai on my computer!”

Sam was about to make his second attempt at entering the kitchen, with Bilbo in his arms, but he heard Charlie and decided there was no harm in going back to bed for a couple more hours.

“I’m not…! That is not…! I need to look for restaurants, okay?” Dean exploded, as his face turned red.

“Restaurants for what?” asked Charlie, sipping her coffee as she scowled at Dean from the edge of her cup.

“Because I’m planning a sudden and completely unexpected career change,” Dean rolled his eyes. “What do you think?”

Charlie’s mind was still a bit hazy, but when the caffeine finally started to kick in, she realized what exactly they were talking about.

“No!” she said, opening his eyes wide. “You’re doing it? You’re gonna do the thing?”

Dean looked away, embarrassed.

“Yes,” he grumbled. “Now, could you please help me choose a place where I can ask the love of my life to marry me?”

Dean, of course, would later absolutely deny having used those words, but that was what Charlie heard, and after letting out a squeak of delight and throwing her arms around Dean’s neck, she opened the guide for most romantic restaurants in Palo Alto.

“Oh, this one’s got an Elvis imitator!” she said, pointing one of the firsts that popped up. “Cas likes Elvis, right?”

“No place on Thursday,” Dean sighed after calling.

“Why does it have to be on Thursday?” Charlie asked, as she wrote down the numbers of ten other possible restaurants.

Dean mumbled something unintelligible.

“What?”

“I said because we met on a Thursday, okay?” Dean repeated. He was so _not_ enjoying Charlie finding out just how much of a sap he was. “Hit me. What else you got?”

An hour and a half later, when Sam decided he’d got enough of cowering away from whatever they were doing, Dean still hadn’t picked a restaurant. They were all too far away, or too intimate, or not intimate enough, or way too expensive, or way too cheap…

“Dean, I’m sure Cas won’t really mind,” Sam said, and Charlie, who was starting to find Dean’s anxiousness way less cute by the minute, nodded.

“Yeah, but I will,” Dean protested. “I’m only planning on do this once, so I want to do it right.”

Sam’s phone vibrated with a text.

“Jo says why you don’t just take him to the Roadhouse,” he read out loud.

“Why are you texting Jo about me?” Dean asked, and he looked supremely annoyed. “Since when do you and Jo text so much?”

Sam shrugged, to Dean’s exasperation, but Charlie blinked a couple of times.

“Wait, that’s actually a good idea,” she pointed. “You said you want it to be meaningful and familiar, right? What better place than the Roadhouse? You know, the place where you guys first met him.”

Dean stopped his pacing around, and grabbed the phone again. “Ellen? Hi…” his voice trailed off as he left for the living room, because he obviously didn’t want even more people witnessing his plans for what Sam would later qualify as the cheesiest proposal that never came to happen.

Because in the end, Dean and Cas never got to the Roadhouse at all.

 

* * *

 

 

That Wednesday, a pizza delivery boy named Kevin Tran, who rode a bike he’d had since he was fifteen and was now on his freshman year at Stanford, was running on minute twenty-seven, and he knew, from having visited the house where he was going before, that the guy who lived there wasn’t exactly generous with the tips. So Kevin decided to take a shortcut across an alleyway, in the hopes of gaining a few extra seconds.

At the same time, a frat asshole (that might or might not have been friends with Garry, the douchebag from the karaoke club), was trying to impress his latest conquest by driving his silver Mercedes at a suicidal speed down Palo Alto’s backstreets. By mere coincidence, he just so happened to be passing the end of the alleyway at the same time Kevin bolted out of it.

He had exactly three seconds to choose between hitting the brakes and jumping, and in what is mother would later classify as the stupidest and most dangerous of all Kevin’s life decisions, he went for the jump. The tires of his bike scratched the Mercedes’ roof; he somersaulted in the air and landed on the other side of the street, miraculously unscathed. He had ten seconds to enjoy having survived that, because then the frat asshole jumped off his car and started screaming at Kevin, who didn’t really pay attention to him, because he was too busy getting smitten by the beauty spot beneath left eye of the brunette girl that traveled with the douche.

The girl’s name, by the way, was Krissy Chambers, and she would end up ditching the asshole that very same evening, and dating Kevin just a few weeks later. Because sometimes love is weird like that.

 

* * *

 

In any case, to Sam, Kevin’s antics were the detonating event that led to Charlie and Dorothy dating. He had been tutoring Kevin over the summer, and the two had become friends. So when the asshole demanded that Kevin paid for the repair of his car, he called Sam.

“You said your brother worked at a garage, right? Help me, I don’t have the money,” Kevin begged. “Please, Sam, I swear to God, I will never ever ask you for anything again…”

That was, in fact, a lie, because less than two weeks later he would be asking Sam for some money to take Krissy to the movies.

“Alright, sure,” said Sam, who could never deny anything to a friend and was actually eager to finish that call and continue his texting to Jo. “Let me just call Bobby.”

Bobby was grumpy, because when wasn’t he, and as soon as he saw Dorothy passing his office’s door, he called her:

“Hey, Baum, you’ve got a new one rolling in tomorrow and I need it to be ready for Friday.”

“What?” Dorothy screamed back. “Bobby, I already have a shit ton of other cars to paint!”

“Well, too bad for me, ‘cause it looks like I’m gonna have to pay you extra hours,” Bobby said, and closed the door to his office.

Dorothy curved her hands in a pair of claws and imagined Bobby’s throat between them before taking a deep breath and telling herself that she would buy something nice for herself with the money.

“Yeah, I’m popping the question this Thursday,” she overheard Dean talking to Rufus. “I think it’s time.”

Like a rope, for example.

 

* * *

 

So Thursday night, Dorothy was working late on the douche’s Mercedes, silent as a mouse in her corner. She knew Dean was also around the garage, and she knew she’d had to talk to him eventually, unless she wanted him to leave her locked up when he finally left for his date with Charlie. But right now, she focused on working with her hands, carefully erasing the scratches, and pretended she couldn’t hear Dean talking on the phone.

“Because I’m an idiot, okay?” he was saying. “That what you wanted to hear? Yes. Yes. Just do it, dammit! I can’t propose without the goddamn thing!”

Apparently, what Dorothy understood, was that Dean had left his jacket, with the ring, at home, and was convincing his brother to help him out.

What really happened was that Meg had been on the apartment earlier, and mistook Dean’s jacket for Sam’s jacket (“It’s not my fault if the two keep buying nearly identical things!” she would complain upon the group reconstructing the facts,) and so, Dean had taken Sam’s jacket to the garage that day. When Meg called Dean to taunt him about it, Dean tried to convince her to bring the jacket to Sam so Sam could bring it to the garage.

Meg eventually did, but Sam was Skyping with Jo, and didn’t feel like leaving the apartment, so he bribed Charlie with the promise he would watch the three Lord of the Rings movies with her (“Extended versions?” Charlie asked, crooking an eyebrow, and Jo laughed from her window in the computer) if she did it for him.

So at the same time Dorothy was finishing with the Mercedes, Charlie was on her Vespa stuck in a jam five minutes away. The problem was, Castiel had taken the precaution to leave his place early, and so he arrived right on time.

 “Hey, Cas,” Dean laughed nervously upon seeing him. “You, uh… you’re early.”

Dorothy popped her head from behind the Mercedes. Cas? Wasn’t Dean’s brother called Sam?

“We had an appointment,” Castiel reminded Dean.

“Yes, yes we did,” Dean nodded. “Just, uh…”

And here Dean found a small dilemma: he couldn’t tell Cas they had to wait for Charlie, because Castiel would frown and ask why, and Dean couldn’t tell him the reason without spoiling the surprise. But they also couldn’t leave for the Roadhouse until Charlie arrived, so Dean decided the best thing he could do was stall his boyfriend. He took a step forwards, put a hand on Castiel’s cheek and pulled him in for a kiss.

“What is that about?” Castiel laughed.

“What, I can’t just kiss you for no goddamn reason?” Dean asked, and before Castiel could come up with a reply, Dean pushed him against the wall and aggressively started making out with him.

In his defense, his plan was working out just fine until an empty can of oil hit him square in the back of the head.

“YOU LYING BASTARD!” Dorothy roared, as she advanced towards them, five foot and eight inches of pure rage. “YOU… YOU SON OF A…”

“Dorothy, what…? What the hell?!” Dean asked as he ducked, trying to avoid Dorothy’s fists. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m gonna rip your throat out!” Dorothy declared, looking around like she was looking for some sort of weapon to help her fulfill that threat.

“I’m sorry, I believe there has been some sort of misunderstanding?” Castiel tried to intervene.

“YOU SHUT UP!” Dorothy screamed, and before either of them could react, she took another swing at Dean’s face, and this time he wasn’t fast enough.

By the time Charlie parked her Vespa at the garage’s door, Dean was on the floor with a bloody nose and a black eye, and Dorothy was struggling in Castiel’s arms.

“What’s going on?” Charlie asked, her eyes open wide in confusion.

“She’s gone insane!” Dean gasped.

“Oh, _I’ve_ gone insane?!” Dorothy shouted. “You’re the one who was making out with this… this… freakishly strong random dude!”

“Of course I was making out with him!” Dean groaned, while he held his nose high to stop the bleeding. “He’s my boyfriend!”

“Your… your what?” Dorothy asked, and the shock made her stop moving. Immediately Cas let go off her and kneeled next to Dean.

“His boyfriend,” Charlie repeated, opening her arms as if it was obvious. “Cas is Dean’s boyfriend.”

“I think it’s broken,” Castiel commented, gritting his teeth as he tried to carefully touch Dean’s face.

“Wait, you have a boyfriend?” Dorothy asked again.

“I believe we have clearly established the nature of my relationship with Dean,” Castiel said, and this time there was lightning in his eyes when he turned to look at Dorothy. “Now, could you be so kind to drive us to the nearest hospital?”

 

* * *

 

One indescribably awkward car trip later, Charlie, Dorothy and Castiel were sitting on the waiting room while a doctor patched up Dean’s nose.

“So… Dean’s gay,” Dorothy said, like she had just finished processing that information.

“… ish,” Charlie shrugged.

“And you’re gay,” Dorothy continued.

“Oh, yeah, hella,” Charlie said.

“And you were in the army,” Dorothy continued, turning to look at Castiel.

“I’m a beekeeper now,” Castiel clarified. “But I do remember how to snap someone’s neck with my bare hands.”

Dorothy held his gaze for exactly three seconds before looking away in fear. “Duly noted.”

“I’m sorry, but may I ask how it’s possible that these topics hadn’t come up in conversation before now?” Castiel asked.

“Believe me, I’m trying to figure it out, Cas,” Charlie said, shaking her head as she just couldn’t put all her thoughts in order. “I mean, you’d think it’d come up in our date.”

“We didn’t have a date,” Dorothy frowned.

“Well, I thought it was a date,” Charlie explained. “But then you said you liked cute university boys…”

“Yeah, I think I might have been too specific. I actually like cute…” Dorothy opened her hands as if to include the whole waiting room as she looked for a word. “… people,” she finished.

“And you think I’m cute?” Charlie asked, and Dorothy nodded energetically. It felt more like a confirmation than a flirtation, really. “Then why you never said anything?”

“I thought you were with Dean!” Dorothy explained, only then realizing just how stupid she had been. “And I thought you really didn’t want anything to do with me, because I’m difficult and violent, and then the stupid ring came up…”

“What ring?” Castiel intervened.

Well, there was no point in taking it back now. Charlie fished the little red box from the inside of Dean’s jacket and held it out for Castiel to see. The beekeeper opened his mouth, then closed it again, then bit his knuckles as if to keep himself from screaming, and suddenly he went from seriously intimidating ex-marine to adorable five-year-old, and Dorothy wasn’t sure she could take any more plot twists that night.

And then the doctor’s door opened, and Dean walked out with a nose bandage and the most supremely done expression in the whole wide world.

“While I guess dinner’s out of the question,” he complained. “Dude gave so many drugs I swear I’m seeing fairies…”

“YES!” Castiel screamed, jumping out of his chair to stand in front of him, and Dean blinked in confusion.

“Yes, what?” he asked, but then he saw Charlie with the ring box out, and her guilty smile. “No, no, wait!” Dean waved his arms in desperation. “You’re not supposed to say yes yet! I had a speech prepared! I was gonna get on my knee…!”

Castiel interrupted him with a light peck on the lips.

“Yes!” he repeated. “You don’t even need to ask, Dean.”

“Okay, but I’m gonna ask anyway when the painkillers wear off,” Dean warned him.

“Fair enough,” said Castiel, and wrapped his arms around Dean’s neck, and this time he kissed him open-mouthed and passionately.

And because the world sometimes is a magical place, the whole waiting room burst out in a deafening applause that lasted, probably because Dorothy threw murderous glances on the direction of anyone who seemed to be even thinking about saying something remotely homophobic.

“Charlie,” she said, when they were done clapping. “I know I just broke your best friend’s nose, but would you go out with me?”

“Okay, but on an actual date,” Charlie pointed.

“Of course.”

“With handholding,” Charlie demanded.

“All the handholding you want.”

“And goodnight kisses.”

“Lots of goodnight kisses.”

“And sex.”

“Absolutely,” Dorothy promised, and grabbed Charlie by the shoulders to kiss her as well. The applause they earned was only topped by Dean yelling:

“Stop stealing our thunder!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this chapter is a reference to the song of the same name by The Beatles.


	10. Epilogue: She Keeps Me Warm.

They park in front of the Baum’s household almost at nightfall.

“Oh, and remember the first time you stayed over?” Charlie says.

It has been a long day of “Do you remember?” and “Oh, yes, that was when…”, but they’re not tired of it yet. Two years after that night in the waiting room, they still can’t believe just how ridiculous the beginning of their relationship was, and they’re not sure Dorothy’s parent are going to believe them even when they tell them.

“Yes, I remember,” Dorothy laughs. “Your friends hanged a banner that read _‘Congratulations on the sex’_ in the kitchen.”

“Yeah, I wonder how long Meg held on to that one,” Charlie frowns.

“She probably planned to use it for Sam and Jo,” Dorothy points. Charlie doesn’t answer to her joke, and when Dorothy turns to look at her, she notices her girlfriend’s blushing. “Hey, Red, what’s wrong?” she asks, immediately cupping Charlie’s face with her hands.

“We should probably not mention that one to your Dad,” Charlie says.

“Charlie, I’m pretty sure my Dad knows I’m not a virgin,” Dorothy tries to lighten up the situation, but Charlie still looks worried. “Talk to me. What are you afraid of?”

“What if they don’t like me?” Charlie finally lets out the words that have been eating her since Dorothy mentioned her father wanted to meet her.

“What are you talking about? They’re gonna love you,” Dorothy assures her. “Just as much as I love you.”

Charlie’s face immediately light up at those words.

“You need to say that more often,” she comments. “It’s always nice to hear it.”

“Well, I love you,” Dorothy states, kissing Charlie on the forehead. “I love you madly,” she adds, kissing her on the nose. “And deeply.”

Charlie closes the gap between their lips first, and basks in the warmth of Dorothy’s skin. Finally, her girlfriend breaks away with a grin.

“Ready?” she asks.

Charlie squeezes her hand. “Ready.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this epilogue is a reference to the beautiful song by Mary Lambert that first inspired to write this fic.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
